Letters to Our Children: May 2013

My Grace,

Here we are in May...just a few days from my 31st birthday and our 5th Mother's Day's together.  Since becoming a mother myself, Mother's day has become more than just a day to make mom breakfast in bed or buy some flowers. To me, this is a day about looking around and acknowledging all of the amazing women, the mothers, who have made us who we are today. We come from a long line of mothers, and who we are is simply a fabric woven by the love they have shared. When I hold you in the middle of the night, I am thinking about all of the women who have come before me. I picture your great-grandmother rocking her own babies (your grandmother and great aunts) in the middle of the night, humming a tune that she must have made herself at some point in her journey. The same tune that instinctively comes when I am comforting you and I allow my soul to take over...the one that I trust you will turn to when you rock your own babies someday. I know in my soul how to love you with immeasurable depth because that is what I experienced as well. When that legacy of love continues from generation to generation, there is no way to separate it from your core- it is why you are the amazingly compassionate, deeply sensitive little girl you are today.

So on the days when you feel alone, like there is no one out there who understands you or cares, I want you to think about the legacy that comes before you. You, though wonderful and amazing as an individual, are a small part of something so much larger than any one of us alone. I hope you pause to marvel at the breadth of that fact, and realize that there are countless mothers who live inside of you and help to shape your destiny.

All my love.

As a mother and a photographer, I have been fortunate to find myself in the company of other moms and photographers who speak my language. I have found a community of women who feel deeply for their children, and strive to hold on to every moment with their cameras. We are from all corners of the world, but we all feel the same love. It is with some of these very women that I have taken on a personal project: Letters to Our Children.  Please continue to Heather's blog to read her beautiful letter.