Kaeleigh: thank you for showing up, for unapologetically owning your space, rejoicing in your physicality, for braving the wind and snow with me. Thank you for reminding me that approaching the water with openness and love means that the water won’t always behave as we want or expect, that the water before us reflects the water within us, and still, we enter.
I've said it once, I'll say in again: I love capturing high school seniors. Summers are filled to the brim with the chaos of wedding season, so taking an evening to chat with and photograph the incredible young people I work with is a breath of fresh air. Tammy is a GEM of a young woman - she is confident, kind, humble, and as you can see, simply stunning. Thank you, my new friend, for trusting me when I directed you to become friends with the trees and frolic through the fields of Discovery Park. Cheers, lovely lady! I'm so thrilled for what life has in store for you. Thanks for making art with me!
"To die is not a bad thing. Cells die every day. Paradoxically, it is how the body lives. Casings shed. Coverings fall away. New growth appears. It is how we stay vital. Likewise, ways of thinking die like cells, and we suffer greatly when we refuse to let what's growing underneath make its way as the new skin of our lives. It is the stubbornness with which we we refuse to let what's growing underneath come through that pains us. It is the fear that nothing is growing underneath that feeds our despair. It is the moment that we cease growing in any direction that is truly deadly...
...When resisting this process, we become a troubled guest, moaning like a human crow. We double the pain of living when we try to stop the emergence that all life goes through. Imagine if trees never shed their leaves, or if waves never turned over, or if clouds never dumped their rain and disappeared...
...I say this as much to remind myself as you: Little deaths prevent big deaths. What matters most is waiting its turn underneath all that is expending itself to prepare the way." - Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: August 9th