Letters to Our Children: June 2014

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." ~Maya Angelou

Grace,

Tonight I held you as you cried. As the tears ran down your face in anxious anticipation of the changes to come, you stated simply, "I want to go home."  And so, my love, all I could do was cry with you. I understand how you are feeling. How many times have I said, "I want to go home", knowing full well that the word "home" holds within it so many meanings. Home is where we rest our heads at night, but it is also where we can go to be as we are. Our safe place where the world can't touch us. Home is the comfort we create for ourselves, extending so far beyond material possessions.

As we get ready to make a huge physical move, we are also leaving one home and creating another. You must know just how hard it was for me to pack up our material possessions, and to walk out of the only home you have known. Oh Grace, if those walls could talk, the stories they would tell.  Never could I have imagined that so much love could exist within one structure. As I spent the day packing and moving, it was like a movie was playing through my mind. Instead of the big moments, I found myself thinking about all of the seemingly little occurrences...the small things that comprise the fabric of our family. The times I spent rocking you in the middle of the night, the breakfasts your dad cooked for us in the kitchen, the hours we spent coloring on the porch with sidewalk chalk... It is hard to walk away from that. The thing that keeps me going is knowing that we will create a new home together, with many great memories to come.

Where you are, where there is love that can't be shaken, that is now and will always be my home.

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 Nicole's blog to read her beautiful letter.