Her name was Nancy and she came to visit me at our house just after Hudson was born. She had been a nurse for nearly her entire life and was exactly the face that I needed to see after the week that I had just experienced. She was gentle. Non-judgmental. Calm. She was all of the things that I wasn’t at the time and she was there to tell me that everything would be alright.

I answered the door that morning in tears. It was my first day alone at the house with Hudson and the world looked very different to me at the time. She very graciously assured me that I was certainly not the first new mother to find herself in such a state. We sat down in our family room, Hudson asleep on the couch, and began to discuss what had triggered this onset of tears. She, of course, already knew because she had seen and heard it countless times before…but it was a first for me.

We sat and talked for nearly two hours. Mostly about the baby and motherhood but also just about life because our new baby had just become our life. As she quietly sat across from me, she began to ask about our future…the life that would inevitably build once this day of endless tears finally passed. That’s when she asked me if I was planning on going back to work.

Work! What a strange concept that had become over time now that I was holding a tiny little person whose very survival was dependent on me. Wasn’t I already in the midst of the most difficult work that I’d ever do? But I had also left another kind of “work”…the work that I had known for over a decade that didn’t involve spit up and changing diapers. Then there was also my camera; the one thing that stood alone in this discussion…

I was planning on returning to my photography less than three short months after having Hudson. Certainly not with the same time consuming schedule that I would otherwise commit to but I was going back nonetheless. And I was excited for it. I had weddings and engagements and maternity shoots all set up; I was meeting with clients; I had classes and exhibits registered for, and all the while, it didn’t feel like work.

As I began to hear the words come out of my mouth, I found myself defending my choice as though I was defending my honour because somehow, in the midst of our conversation, I had caught myself questioning whether or not this made me a bad mother; whether or not my desire for something beyond motherhood meant that I wasn’t cut out to do it in the first place? But my nurse just sat there with the most compassionate of expressions on her face as she listened to me battle it out with the demons in my head.

Because here’s the thing…

There are no words for how much I love my son and my husband. There are no words for how much I love being a wife and a mother. There are no words for how grateful I feel to have these men in my life. There are simply no words. And so I give. I give every single fiber of my being into loving this child and the amazing man that sleeps next to me every night. And there are no words for how much I love doing so. But being the woman that I am, I can lose myself in all of the giving. I’m notorious for it.

And so I need my camera to help me be me. I need it to help remind me of the person that I was before I became a wife and a mother. And though I wasn’t a photographer before either of these things, I was a person who used her artistic side as her outlet; her passion as her therapy. I need to create in order to find my sense of balance; I need the time alone, behind my camera, to breathe and re-boot. I need to visit those places in myself that are not linked to my son or my husband because in a strange sort of way, I think that doing so helps me to be a better wife and a better mother.

Looking back, nearly eighteen months later, what I’m surprised to find is just how much my time as a photographer has affected the kind of mother that I ultimately want to be.  Week after week, I watch parents give their children away to a new life…a new family…a new love.  Fathers walk their daughters down the aisle…sons smile at their mothers from a distance and all the while, words are being spoken.

I wasn’t expecting to be affected so much by this element of the weddings that I shoot…being inspired by the “children” that I work with as clients who, in the sweetest of ways, are saying goodbye to their parents.  But as I watch it all happen, it makes me wonder what it would be like to stand at Hudson’s wedding…who his wife would be…what I would say about my baby boy.

Emily and Jason had the most eloquent words to say to their parents on their wedding night.  As I stood there, standing against the railing, taking it all in, I was so moved by the essence of who these two adults came to be.  They thanked their parents for maintaining that fine balance that is raising children – providing them with everything they need to grow…while giving them the space needed to be themselves.  It’s not an easy accomplishment to attain but it’s one that was clearly achieved at this moment in time.

So it turns out that I don’t just need my camera to help me be me…I need my clients as well.  I need their experiences and their growth and their moment in the sunshine.  I need it all.

Emily and Jason, thank you for sharing all of that with me.  Thank you for letting me in on the blessing that was your wedding day and thank you for helping me – in your own little way – be a better mother…

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