Well, we did it, friend.
It was the first family session without you (even though we all knew you were very much there). I reached out to Ian a few weeks after you left us and asked him what he wanted me to do with the deposit you had sent for your session. I offered to donate it to Beauty For Ashes, but he asked me to keep it for a family session when they felt ready.
I’m not sure how ready anyone can be for things like this, but we showed up and leaned into all of it anyway. Maybe that’s what “ready” is now, in its bone deep, truest form. Instead of scouting the "good light," we gazed at a painting of you... felt the weight of your absence- and then we threw leaves up in the air and danced up and down the median on Monument Avenue. It was good and hard and sweet and strange. But it was also real, and that's what you always wanted. You were never okay with fake.
I'm reminded all over again how wildly intimate it is to do this work- even when it’s not intertwined with friendship. You were one of the first people to start booking sessions with me when I was a brand new photographer, to unknowingly boost my confidence time and time again when I was new and unsure. Every frame I have of you and your family represents a moment you intentionally chose me to witness- and even though they’ll be forever filtered now through my own grief- I hope you know how much it meant.
I hope you know how much more it means especially now, in your absence, to be trusted with all the love that’s still there, and always will be.
We miss you.
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