05/06/2020
Over the last two years I have hardly posted on social media.
It began around the time my friend Julie’s cancer came back. We had gotten in deep fast as friends and I was there when she got the news. She asked me to be a part of it all and I started going to doctors appointments with her. We did photo shoots amongst hospital curtains and made it fun. As fun as possible…..And Julie accomplished impossible feats through research, additional schooling, diet, intuition and sheer will. Doctors kept saying, “I don’t know how this is possible…but.”
Watching this provocative, highly intelligent, incredibly vivacious creature fight to stay on the planet for her daughter was powerful and heart breaking. She was strong. She trusted her body. After shrinking tumors, defying hospice multiple times, surviving a seizure, a broken neck, and outliving her death sentence by years she left an 11 year old daughter behind. What followed was two years of insanity around me. One after another a new tragedy seemed to fall. Right when I thought there would be a chance to take a breath another physical, emotional, or mental challenge landed with the power of a storm, disrupting all the new delicate growth. Julie passed on, my grandfather died, and my partner’s mom passed suddenly in rapid succession etc. etc. I kept watching happy, healthy, aware people pass in a flurry.
Somewhere in there…I stopped knowing how to tell my own story. All the tragedy became woven together and tangled in such a way it became hard to access something that had always come so naturally to me. Connecting to that which was bigger than me became difficult when it never had been before.
Now, during this exceptional time, I have felt a new wave of inspiration and regeneration emerging through the cracks. In the past few weeks I have kept feeling Julie with me. And maybe now, right when things are the wildest of all, the peace and calm and healing from all these lessons will emerge in a whole new way.
Therefore, it seems natural to post some of the images that I collected over the past few years that I never shared. Ones that celebrate being in a body, on this planet, right meow.
Photo credit: