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I’ve been a bit quiet over here lately as in the last couple weeks the earth has been shaking under my feet. Almost a week ago now, my Grammy, who I was very close to, passed away. She was a truly amazing woman who taught us so much about savouring the simple beauty of life and was someone with whom I got to experience unconditional love.
For those of you who have been in Be Your Own Beloved, you have heard me mention her in one specific prompt where we are looking into the camera with love. Her health has been very up & down in the last year with many strokes, so in this activity in particular as we are thinking about someone we love when taking the photo…I would think of her and send her love.
Grief and I have met many times in my life and I feel like each time I lose someone it opens up the well of grief as a whole. I loved my Grammy so much & had so much gratitude for her, which made losing her even more intense. I’m still definitely in the grief stage and taking good self-care right now.
I wanted to share this photo with you though, of her and I taken on the day we had a party for her 80th birthday.
There were a number of photos taken on that day, with each of us and she looked so happy and while I don’t think she loved being photographed in general she most definitely let me take so many pictures on this day and I’m so glad she did.
This photo though. I wanted to share it because if I focus on myself in it, old stories have the opportunity to emerge. Yes, this is probably taken at my heaviest. Yes, my eyes are drawn to focus on my arms which are one of the parts of my body I still have some love to cultivate with. Yet those were my inner critics talking. I’ve learned through exploring self-love through self-portraiture that I have another choice, even when looking back at photos from the past.
But when I look at it without those critiques, I am choosing to not let those things be the story that is most important in this photo. I choose love.
So I let those momentary thoughts go rather than make them my reality.
Because I see such love in her eyes in this one and it makes me feel connected to her, to be able to look in her eyes with love even if she isn’t here on earth anymore.
I wanted to also share this with you to share a bit about what has been going on behind the scenes here and to share this photo that I’m choosing to see with love with you. I wanted to share this with you in case you have photos of loved ones who have passed away that could be healing to see without self-critique of ourselves in it. I wanted to share this with you in hopes that next time you are with family, you’ll take more photos (even if you and your family aren’t all that fond of having your photo taken).
Again I’m reminded at how valuable photographs feel in my life, not just self-portraits, as a way to be able to look back on our lives & people we love.