Those who know me well know that where ever I am, I'm always snapping away with my camera. Spotting the perfect picture or capturing a moment that I need to snap as it will help me remember the moment.
I adore taking photos, for me they are an investment for the future, for a time when I wake up and realise I'm in the later years, I want to be able to sit and be lost in the beautiful days I was blessed to have with my children, family and friends. I know I'll smile, I'll cry and I'll remember the days when I really did have it all. They're also capturing memories, emotions and more poignantly - people.
Some photos have that little bit more significance because they capture a really strong emotion, this photo is one of those. It gets me everytime. ❤️
I remember everything about this day.
That's my boy, right there - with his Grandpa who'd just found out that week he had cancer. They'd gone for a little walk to watch the boats go by in the harbour and I was inside with grandma and daddy, pregnant with our daughter. It was tough. You wonder how it'll all work out and how you'll cope, but somehow you do.
The months rolled by, my baby arrived early as hoped so Grandpa got to hold her before his treatment began.
Eight months later and things picked up and life carried on, not the same, but mostly the same.
The happy, baby filled years of wonder and sleep deprivation rolled by......... Then that beautiful, sweet bubble of love and happiness burst, not with a loud, astounding pop, but with more of a slow puncture. A crack, that slowly opened and swallowed up everything I knew and loved. From the outside no one else really noticed until somehow life was how I had never imagined it could be yet I hid it - mostly behind the picture of a perfect family life because from the outside we had it all. On the inside it was a living nightmare.
And it was in this chapter that my camera saved my life. I began to take pictures of everything. People, flowers, natural beauty and mostly my children who saved my heart and my soul. And so my blog " some kind of wonderful was born". It wasn't that I was always happy and living in some kind of fairytale as it may have appeared but more that I was living in some kind of hell and the only way I knew to survive was to look for small glimmers of beauty, love and hope.
I saw beauty in the small things that were all around me and slowly, so very slowly the heartache became lighter and from the outside, normal life resumed although very different to the perfect life I'd once known.
It's now a different normal, one I wouldn't have chosen but nonetheless it's our normal and it's happy.
Taking photos for me allows me to see beauty and realise that when you look closely enough, it really is all around and in the least expected places.
I feel blessed to have such a strong, supportive family and the most wonderful friends - this lot have been there through thick and thin and I feel blessed to have them in my life.
They are like family to me and have helped me ride the stormy seas.
I always described those toughest of days, weeks, months ( years) as feeling I was on the smallest boat in the middle of a stormy sea with no sight of the shore. Alone. As the past two years have rolled by, the shoreline has become slowly visible and nowadays I can feel the sand between my toes as I step ashore. Gently ready for a new chapter, to share new adventures and see what life has to offer.
When I think of that I can't help but smile, I just wonder what my camera will see in the coming years, what memories it will create - it's exciting and I can't wait!
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