Erin Nolen

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Erin Nolen

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www.erinnolenphotography.com

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www.nolenphotography.com

Photographer, writer and certified story work coach in Birmingham.

✨ Photography sessions for families, high school seniors and branding headshots.
✨ Author and founder of Erin Nolen Pays Attention on Substack
✨ Support and clarity sessions for women

12/06/2026

It’s fitting that it took me all day to find enough uninterrupted brain space to write this post, which is exactly what this week’s newsletter is about.

If you’ve also struggled to transition out of school-year routine and into summer, you might find it helpful.

I write on Subst*ck every Tuesday, alternating between essays and newsletters. Newsletter weeks (like this one) are a mix of a short essay, book, podcast and product recommendations, and photos from my life and garden. I try to keep the newsletters a little breezier. 😎 This summer I’m doing an essay series on decoding therapy-speak for normal people.

You don’t have to subscribe. But it would make me really happy if you did. 🔗 in bio.

08/06/2026

Sunday Garden Round-Up 🍅🌱

Today is our twenty-third wedding anniversary.

How do you write about marriage and tell the truth?

I still don’t know. I’ve heard people say their marriage has been easy, that they don’t argue, disagree, or hurt one another. I also know some marriages cut you to the bone and wound you in ways you never imagined. Sometimes marriage is boring, full of logistics and calendars and requests to send the bank code.

No one knows what it’s like to live inside someone else’s marriage. By its nature, it exists only between two people, and those two people often experience the same marriage differently.

It’s really a sacred sh*tshow, if you think about it. Two people carrying their experiences, hopes, dreams, blind spots, family histories, and even the parts of themselves that remain a mystery, trying to make a promise and keep making it year after year.

The longer I live, the less interested I am in simple explanations for why marriages succeed or fail.

I don’t really know how to talk about my particular marriage on the internet, and I don’t think I will.

I will tell you that I hope the traditional twenty-third anniversary gift is produce, because the only thing I requested to mark the occasion was the tomato salad at a Birmingham restaurant called the Hot & Hot Fish Club.

We spent the evening talking with our neighbors at the bar. They were funny and interesting, kind and interested. When we asked for our check, the bartender told us the couple had paid for our meal.

It was a lovely evening.

I will never shy away from telling you that our marriage has not been easy. It would not do any of us any favors to pretend otherwise.

But after twenty-three years, I am grateful to be celebrating this anniversary with Corey. I am grateful for his curiosity and kindness, for the way he engages strangers, asks meaningful questions, and leaves people feeling seen. He still makes me laugh. Look at those two babies who met at summer camp and fell in love. We’ve been through a lot together.

I don’t know how to write about marriage and tell the truth. Maybe this is as close as I can get.

05/06/2026

Getting tickets to a concert is such a great idea in theory…and then it gets close and you remember that concerts start so stupidly late and you have to drive all the way downtown and then you have to walk a long way and you might get kind of grumpy like why did you think this was a good idea anyway and then you have to wait through the openers who are cute at first but then go too long and you start thinking maybe you’re going to be here all freaking night long and you’re trapped in the middle of this aisle seat and why didn’t you spring for better tickets anyway but then the show starts and everyone is so collectively happy and relieved that they made it to this moment when the music is there and the people are there and then the mysterious thing happens where there’s singing and hollering and woohoo-ing and all these humans have together agreed that in this place they can tell the whole world about their heartbreak and their fears and in this place you are even safe to sing as loud as you want to about pain and hurt and no one even cares about pretending like they don’t feel those things because you have a concert permission slip and that is a freebie to tell the truth and sometimes, if you are really lucky, you will get to sit next to some darling teenage boys and hear them sing their absolute guts out and you will watch them all try to record these songs they know by heart on the tiny computer that lives in their pockets and you will know that all of those videos are shaky and crappy and useless except that they helped them feel like they could bottle just a little bit up and try to take just a sip of the magic again later and if you are paying attention and depending on your definition of things you might end up feeling like you went to church on a Thursday evening because laughing and fellowshipping and singing under the stars on a summer night sure does feel pretty damn holy.

“I’ve been up on the mountain,
and I’ve seen His wondrous grace
l’ve sat there on a bar stool,
and I’ve looked Him in the face
He seemed a little haggard,
but it did not slow Him down
He was humming to the neon of the universal sound”

04/06/2026

Guys, summer is so people-y.

I’m trying to find some semblance of routine and rhythm but everything seems like it’s working against me. So many fits and starts and snacks and screen time negotiations. As usual, this probably means I need to stop trying so hard and let the current carry me a little.

I’m trying! And also I need some structure.

I’m doing a series this summer on my Subst*ck about decoding some of the therapy speak language I see everywhere right now. I promise to do my best to not make you feel like nervous system regulation is one more thing you’re failing at.

Link to the first essay is in my bio.

01/06/2026

Sunday Garden Round-Up 🌴

I took this first picture tonight during a family dinner at my in-laws’ house.

The local fam was all there: my parents, all three of my kids, my niece and her charming boyfriend, my sister- and brother-in-law. Our collective dogs, obviously. It was fun and easy, and Alex brought fresh warm sourdough, so truly, what more could we ask for?

I got home this afternoon after spending five nights away on a work trip. That is a long time! My friend Tara was hired to do a gigantic unpacking and organization job in Florida, and she needed assistants to help her. I’ve assisted on other House Peace jobs in the past, but nothing to this scale. I’ve traveled for lots of photography jobs, but that is completely different work.

Everything about this week was outside my routine and regular life. The job was hard and exhausting, but also meaningful and fun. We met amazing people who trusted us to come alongside them in their home. We worked our tails off.

Last night we had dinner by the bay and watched the sunset over the water. It was a perfect ending to a job well done. Afterwards, we drove over to see the full moon rising over the ocean. I sat on a bench on the pier and listened to the waves, felt the breeze, and tried to be present.

But mostly I missed my family and my goofy dog and my own bed.

There really is no place like home. 🩵

25/05/2026

Sunday Garden Round-Up 🩰

Every week I think maybe I will scrap this whole little ritual, but then I grab my little plant clippers and go see what I can stick in a jar and put on the counter again this week. I open my computer and start typing.

We’ve had a big few days.

Thursday was the last day of school, and then we rolled right into dance recital weekend for Cora. As my friends and I like to say, most of life right now feels like we are parenting our asses off through some circumstance, event, drama, mishap, or emotional side quest our kids are either experiencing or causing.

And I am here to tell you that getting an anxious kid through the anxiety of a performance requires a fair amount of emotional lifting, stage makeup, snack management, pep talks, outfit logistics, and lots and lots of pre- and post-recital treats.

In other words, I feel like I have been parenting my ass off.

Do I have any regrets? NOT A SINGLE ONE.

She had a ball, and I loved coaching her, encouraging her, celebrating her, and watching her do something brave and beautiful.

I also prepped Keilor for a big week of camp, had dinner with friends, went to the pool, and I am trying my best to be present instead of pregame and stress about the chaos of summer. Because it will not stop raining, we decided to stay home instead of heading to the lake for Memorial Day, which means tomorrow is suddenly this wide-open day I did not plan on having.

And for the love of everything, I am trying to just let myself have a wide-open day that doesn’t have to prove anything.

Repeat after me (she says to herself):

I do not have to have a perfect summer plan in place.

I do not have to get started on every house project or pile at this exact moment.

I do not have to perform summer.

I can just let it begin. 💛

18/05/2026

Happy Sunday. Welcome to the Sunday Garden Round-Up, where I share a little bit of garden stuff and a little bit of life.

I spent most of the weekend recovering from the Friday night sleep training that is having teenagers, waiting up for them to get home and then accidentally getting a second wind and staying up even later to finish your book. What is everyone’s late night strategy? I usually go with phone alarm on the couch until everyone is safe and sound but I still hate it.

I need to tell you that I have had the Puerto Rico song in my head all weekend. I still like it as of Sunday night and am expecting to hate its guts by midweek after we all run it into the ground. This is why we can’t have nice things.

I am reading and listening to The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett and I am loving it. The audio is perfect.

My brain is currently a mashup of perfect Southern drawls and that Puerto Rico song. That’s all that lives in there now.

Tomorrow starts our last week of school! Exactly none of my kids got cardstock awards last week but if I could give them some this weekend, they’d be: “achieved a lifelong dream of becoming a lifeguard,” “won an award at a truck show after working really hard to do so,” and “played laser tag at a birthday party even though she was so nervous she thought she was going to throw up.”

Let me know if you need an award or a trophy. I’m handing those things out to anyone who needs one and last I checked, that was all of us. Happy almost summer, y’all. We’ve got this. 🩷

13/05/2026

I worked hard on this essay.

I’ve been reading Love Like A Mother by and it’s helped me find words for my own experiences. I think that’s what good writing does.

Dan Siegel says we come into the world looking for someone looking for us. I think we stand up on this lookout our entire lives, always hoping someone somewhere can reflect back to us what we know deep within ourselves. This essay is about me and my experience but I hope you will find yourself in it somewhere too.

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