Into the light.

December 30, 2015, Caddo Mills (Texas.)

Mostly I worry about money, like an undercurrent I can’t fight.
Yet the deep river of my worries is tinged with light.
Isn’t it the light you see first, out of the shadows in the image drawing your gaze, making you want to smile?
I had to add up the sum of what I earned this year to reapply for health insurance, and it was a sobering and depressing endeavor, topped only by looking at the list of my photography clients.
Building a business takes time, my friends tell me, especially a photo business. Ideally it is done with the backing of a spouse who provides the earnings and the support, moral as well as material, while the investments, the bills and the worries pile up. Here I am, and there may not be a worse way to start a business than the one I went about this year, emotionally bankrupt, financially strained, physically drained. Not surprisingly it’s not working, at least not yet, by far.
So I worry about money. I worry about ever earning enough again to be independent, to raise my kids solo and not have to ask anybody anything, to walk proud, to walk light and beautiful. Then come the holidays and the holidays are hard, there is nothing worse than the holidays, and trying to make the memories sweet and happy for the kids, trying to be a presence of joy and lightheartedness, and his presence/absence in our lives so difficult to bear, and that it’s all ending soon and it’s a relief and it’s so scary.
But I will be strong and I will be joy and with each with one of my breath I will bring my kids light and beauty and laughter no matter what scorching winds the fear rides, and I will defeat it with each act of creation and each act of love and they are the same and it is on the wings of their winds that the world is born into its perfection every moment everywhere.

Gratitude.

December 13, 2015, Columbia (Missouri.)

It is raining and warm outside, and the house is full of colors, the walls red, turquoise blue, bright yellow, the boys’ eyes.
The past week has brought me recognition beyond my expectations and again the love of friends and family pouring in from all over the world, keeping all those colors screaming.
Daily living is still a stressful race against the clock with two kids’ lives I strive to keep as alive and joyful and full of soul-opening opportunities as I can, and three jobs I try to juggle, but I am finally making friends, thanks to a part-time job started this summer at a French-Spanish immersion school, French friends, Puerto Rican friends, American friends, the way I like it, my rainbow of life, the screaming colors, wide open and crazy my life and our friends and the door to my house. Even when it is cold outside I can’t bear to close the front door, leave it open I say, I need the light, the door to the motor home when we were a circus family wide open and my spouse complaining about the cold or the wind or the heat but I would reopen it the instant he was gone, and at the house here it is open wide, because I want to see outside and bring in the light, because I want to see outside and bring in the world.
But I’m lost in my words again and all I wanted to say was that in the maelstrom of our lives I am so happy, and I got to shoot a senior portrait yesterday, too, and giving tribute to that almost grown man’s face was a fitting culmination of my week’s gratitude.