Have you ever started a journal? And then been so sure that this time, THIS time, you were going to write in that journal faithfully every. single. day. no matter what? Except that after writing consistently for a little while, you proceed to not only lose the journal itself, but forget that it ever existed at all?

This exact scenario happened to me a few weeks ago. I found 50+ pages of an old journal. We aren't talking 50 pages of the weather or what I had for breakfast. We’re talking  50+ pages full of my most heart felt expressions and quandaries at the time. And not just any time. It was the journal I started right when Covid began.

As I skimmed through the entries,  I kept asking myself: how could I have possibly just tossed these pages aside like they weren't a big deal? Then I checked the date of my last entry. It was the same month I went back on the road again to photograph family travel sessions. Your family photo sessions. The ones that we put off for an entire year, and in some cases more than a year. 

Thats when it clicked. The reason I’d so abruptly  abandoned my passionate journal routine was because the world began again. And even though I did not feel ready to release the slower rhythms quarantined had afforded me-- rhythms that were much needed for my mental health and my children’s’ - rhythms that seemed more gentle on the earth herself-

2021 was a little bit of a “ready or not, here I come situation.” The “it,” being my bills. The “it,” being the commitments I’d made to you, my incredible clients. 

And so it was that the very same day I re entered the world to do a job I’d done for  years (albeit with complex feelings of gratitude, devotion and hesitancy), just as the world was moving in her new/old shape since COVID, barely reopening to travelers like myself,  ---on that same day I felt my personal universe  also reborn.

And how are universes born?

Out of  #%^*  chaos. 

I was a wreck that day. I was on my way from the SLC airport to LAX and my overly sanitized hands were shaking as they hefted my camera bag over my shoulders. I was trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. But I was also navigating crying in public while wearing a mask for the first time. I’d barely left my home for an entire year in 2020, now here I was about to board a plane in Feb of 2021, surrounded by travelers in a busy airport, as if nothing had changed.

But of course, everything had changed. Who knew the mark each heart around me carried? There were as  many shiny plastic partitions in place to protect people as there were people.  Each face was behind a mask, a protocol I completely supported. Yet I missed those faces. I missed my proximity with them. Inwardly, I grieved yet another separation in a culture already so heartbreakingly divided.

On the one hand, the mask helped conceal the wobbly lady having a  breakdown at the airport. On the other hand,  I wasn’t loving being trapped so intimately with my own snot and breath. To make matters worse, I couldn’t seem to STOP crying largely in part because I didn’t really understand why I had started crying in the first place. Nothing was particularly wrong, I was even excited to finally connect with families who had patiently waited as their sessions got postponed  from 2020 to 2021. The thing was----(insert snotty sniff) 

The (sniff) ...thing (gasp).....was (sniff, sniff) 

It all felt like too much. 

And too fast.

I knew in my body that something in the pace and attempted return to business as usual was an imbalance I would not be able to live within for very long.

Quarantine had reaffirmed something I suspected long before the world shut down; that for too long we have been moving our bodies - our lives, and the people we loved most at violent, unsustainable speeds.

I promised myself that I would fulfill my amazing  creative collaborations with you, while also figuring out a way to shift the balance. 

What I saw when I moved into your beautiful homes and witnessed you in all of your changes, your own learning, your own transformative and artful lives, is that I wasn’t the only one who felt called to restore balance in their lives.

While, of  course a hard life stop  wasn’t available to most of us  (I kept working from home the whole of US quarantine to replace my photography income so I could support the kids and I) so many of you that I showed up to photograph in 2021 had, like me, felt the call to lean in to your home and to your loved ones more than ever before. In short, you were  slowing down and choosing each other. You were prioritizing connection and creativity wherever you could.

Some of you were building furniture. 

Some of you were growing gardens.  

Some of you were writing. 

Some of you were talking to trees. 

Some of you were healing old wounds + replacing patterns that didn’t serve you any longer.  

Some of you were beginning new dreams. 

Some of you were grieving. 

Some of you were fighting for life. 

Some of you were ending relationships. 

Some of you were tangling with mystery. 

Some of you were lighter after letting go.  

Some of you were  taking risks you hadn’t thought yourselves capable of before. 

You were so beautiful to me. 

I did my best to honor each and every place I found you and your families in with my lens in 2021.

All the while knowing that the sheer number of you was at odds with slower pace I needed to shift to. I knew. needed to slow down in order to:

1. Continue creating the intimate experience and art I cherish with my clients.

2. Be home where as a single parent of three children, some of who’m have special needs, I am greatly needed.

I am happy to announce as we move into 2022, I have made that shift with SECOND SIGHT SESSIONS.

While fewer in number, SECOND SIGHT SESSIONS are a way of offering photography sessions that makes more space for:

Presence + Ease.

Rawness + Essence.

Art + Innovation.

The world is irrevocably changed. We are not the same. The way we see our families is not the same. And the way I see your family can’t stay the same either. 

So let’s look again.

Let’s look a little longer and harder. 

At ourselves. 

At who we love. 

At the natural world.

Let’s not lose any more time. 

Let’s be present. 

Let’s create. 

Together.

Within our limits, we deepen our infinite connection and care.