09/06/2026
STORIES THAT STAYED WITH ME | HANNAH 🤎
This week’s story is a little different.
Usually, Stories That Stayed With Me is where I share the people and moments I’ve been lucky enough to capture through the years. The stories that found a little permanent place in my heart long after I put my camera away.
But this one? This is the story that changed every story that came after it.
Twenty-one years ago today, Hannah made me a mom.
I remember holding this tiny baby girl and having absolutely no idea just how much my entire world had changed. I knew I loved her. I knew I would spend the rest of my life loving her. But there was so much I didn’t know yet.
I didn’t know that I had just given birth to one of the greatest loves of my life.
I didn’t know that tiny little girl would grow up to be so much like me that sometimes it’s almost scary. 😂 I didn’t know she would understand me in ways very few people ever could. I didn’t know she would become the person I go to when I need to talk something through, vent about life, laugh until I can’t breathe, or sometimes just cry.
I definitely didn’t know I was giving birth to my future best friend. But I was.
There is something so incredibly special about having daughters. You spend so many years being the one they need. You hold their hands. You fix the hurts you can fix and sit beside them through the ones you can’t. You teach them, worry about them, cheer for them, fight with them, laugh with them and love them through every version of who they are becoming.
And then somewhere along the way, something shifts. One day you look over and realize that little girl isn’t so little anymore.
She’s a woman.
And somehow, while you were busy raising her, she became someone who holds you, too.
Hannah has been teaching me about motherhood since the very first day I became one. She was my first everything. My first newborn. My first sleepless nights. My first time watching first steps and hearing first words. My first first day of school. My first teenager. My first driver’s license. My first graduation. My first child to leave for college.
Every new season of motherhood started with her. She was the one who made me a mom, but the older I get, the more I realize she has helped make me who I am, too.
We are so much alike, yet somehow we balance each other perfectly. The yin to my yang. She knows when I need someone to tell me I’m right… and unfortunately, she also has no problem telling me when I’m absolutely wrong. 😂 She’s one of my favorite people to do absolutely nothing with, one of the first people I want to tell things to, and one of the few people in this world who can make me laugh when I really don’t feel like laughing.
And today, my first baby is TWENTY-ONE.
I don’t know how that’s possible.
While I was taking these pictures of her, there were a few moments when I looked through my lens and it almost took my breath away. Because for just a split second, I didn’t see the 21-year-old woman standing in front of me. I saw my little girl.
It was like a flashback I wasn’t expecting. Something about her smile, or the way she looked at me, and suddenly there she was. That same little face I’ve watched through every stage of growing up, smiling back at me through my camera.
And maybe that’s one of the strangest, most beautiful and most heartbreaking parts of motherhood. They grow up right in front of you, but somehow you never stop seeing all the versions of them that came before.
I can look at Hannah today and see this beautiful grown woman—independent, strong, funny, smart, with a whole life ahead of her—and at the exact same time, I can still see the baby who made me a mother. The little girl whose hand fit inside mine. The teenager who tested me, taught me, and grew right alongside me.
They’re all still there.
And looking through that lens, I swear I saw every one of them.
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to freeze time for other mothers. Giving them photographs of the tiny hands, the missing teeth, the belly laughs, the senior years, the fleeting little pieces of childhood we all swear we’ll never forget.
Today, I think I realized all over again just how badly I wish I could have frozen some of my own. Because motherhood really is lived in chapters.
Some are messy. Some are hard. Some you wish you could rewrite, and some are so beautiful you would give anything to live inside them just one more time. And somehow, you turn the page again and again until one day the baby from the very first chapter is standing in front of your camera, twenty-one years old. And you wonder how in the world you got here so fast.
I would give anything to whisper something to the younger version of me holding that brand-new baby girl 21 years ago.
I’d tell her, You have no idea how good this is going to be. I’d tell her to soak up every ordinary Tuesday. Every bedtime. Every car ride. Every laugh from the backseat. Every time she hears “Mom.” Every sleepy cuddle. Every hand reaching for hers. Every single little thing she thinks she’ll remember forever.
Because somehow, it all goes much faster than she believes it will. And I’d tell her that one day, that baby in her arms is going to grow into one of her very best friends.
Hannah, there has never been a day in your life that I haven’t been grateful that I get to be your mom. Watching you grow has been one of the greatest privileges of my life, but knowing you as the woman you’ve become is one of my greatest gifts.
I hope you know how proud I am of you. Not just for the big things, but for who you are. For your heart. Your humor. Your strength. The way you love people. The way you keep going. And for all the little pieces of you that remind me so much of myself—even the ones that occasionally make me want to pull my hair out because I know exactly where you got them. 😂
No matter how old you get, no matter where life takes you, there will always be a part of me that looks at you and sees the little girl who changed my entire world simply by being born.
Twenty-one years ago, you made me Mom. And if I could go back and do it all again—the sleepless nights, the hard seasons, the growing pains, the tears, the worry, the laughter, the beautiful ordinary days I didn’t know I’d miss so much—I would. In a heartbeat.
My first baby. My first daughter. The one who made me Mom. The yin to my yang. My built-in best friend. My forever girl.
Happy 21st birthday, Hannah. 🤎
Of all the stories I’ve been lucky enough to tell, yours will forever be one of my favorites.
Because before I ever understood just how much stories mattered…you gave me mine. 😭🤎
