This Covid life has given me the opportunity to tidy up my website and make some changes. Low and behold, I stumbled across this little gem that I wrote back in April of 2018 - but never published. It suits where we’re at two years later. Talk about divine timing.

”Life gets tumultuous, difficult to navigate and sometimes it feels like you're going 90 miles an hour around a corner in pitch black and you're not really sure what the road does after that invisible corner. You're just bracing, trying to be at peace and trying to trust your guide and your ability to adapt. It's not easy to say "it is well with my soul." It's not easy to trust things will be okay. Plain and simple : it's not easy. If you're there today, know that you're not alone, know that this is only a season of life. There is always darkness and light even if, at times, one is more prevalent than the other. I encourage you to take a few deep breaths, hold on to faith and know that you are capable.”

The oat rich smell of warm Irish tea fills my morning lungs. Swelling like the dry earth after a summer rain, my deep breath departs as a sigh. The grooves of my ceramic mug awaken every cell in my fingertips; the warmth radiating through them and deep into my palms. Wisps of steam roll over my closed eyes, soothing the tired weight that holds them shut. And so I sit, reveling in the small sensations while distant laughter echos in the back of my mind, a smile drawing at my lips.

There are moments I’ve experienced in life that were so perfect I wanted to memorize them. Every line, every texture, every smell, every taste, every feeling so beautiful I wanted to soak in it forever. A foggy, solitary hike that transports me a world away; laughing around campfires with friends late into the night; chasing wasps with flip flops; streaking full speed down a empty beach under the moonlight and kicking at sea foam with friends; being lulled to sleep by gently billowing curtains as the salty sea air sticks to my face and I feel rested and safe under the weight of my husbands arm across my waist; the nuzzling of a soft puppy snoot fitting perfectly under my chin as we snuggle in for a quiet morning reprieve. All of these moments… I cherish them. I memorize them, like a film roll in my mind.


I think this sentimentality is part of what drew me into photography. Having the ability to encapsulate a moment so I could not forget it - there’s a sense of peace in that. Even the intimacy of sharing something I found beautiful or powerful with other people - sharing a story in a single frame, it’s thrilling and invigorating. I love having this experience with a moment.


In one of my favorite movies, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” there’s this photographer Sean O’Connell. He’s the mold for the “photographer’s photographer” ( <- read that like “a man’s man”), constantly adventuring and seeking out the stories of life. He’s the photographer that only takes one moment, one frame, to tell a story - a moment that always evokes. A single contact sheet of his is full of weeks of adventure. (A contact sheet is essentially a print that the photographer has laid each row of their film on and developed - so you can see the entire roll and examine all the images and decide what to make a large print of. I digress). So, Sean, he even stands on the body of a small airplane as it flies straight into an erupting volcano so he can get the perfect shot at one point in the movie. He puts himself at the center of a moment, the heart of the story - and, oh does this make my photographer heart giddy!


Okay, let me get back on track now that you have a little more of a taste for the spirit of this guy. So, in this movie, the main character - Walter Mitty - works at Life magazine as a negative assets manager. The magazine is being taken over by a team that’s helping them transition from print to digital and are finalizing the very last physical publication. The whole premise of the movie is that Sean sent the perfect cover image to Walter to use with a note that said “The Quintessence of Life” but Walter lost the negative. Being bullied by the takeover team and pressured to find the missing negative, Walter has to throw himself into real life adventure - something he had only previously done in his daydreams - to find Sean and therefore find the missing negative. When Walter finally catches up to Sean who’s in the snowy Himalayas chasing a photograph of the rarely seen snow leopard, Sean tells Walter that he placed the negative in the wallet he gave Walter as a thank you gift for always taking care of his work and their years of a relationship. Walter had previously thrown the wallet away out of frustration. Thanks to his mother’s good sense, she took it out of the trash and saved it. (Yes, I skipped this part of the story because I may as well be telling you the entire movie, haha) The answer to the missing negative’s whereabouts finally solved, Walter heads back home to retrieve his wallet and answer the only question left - what is “the quintessence of life?” Or so we think. At this point in the movie, Walter has experienced a certain personal revelation. So, without looking at the negative, he sends it to print. At the end of the movie after the magazine has downsized and life has changed, Walter’s walking down the street and happens to see the last print publication of Life magazine on a magazine cart - an image on the cover that ever so perfectly captures the quintessence of Life. This moment, when Walter and the audience see the image gave me goosebumps and a lump in my throat.


That moment . . . that’s the power that photography can have. The gravity of an experience like that, well, it’s pretty darn close to real world magic for me. It’s what I love about the moments in my memory, that perfect encapsulation. It’s what I love about looking at a person and seeing their spark, then wanting to preserve that exact second to share with them. It’s remembering every detail… memorizing life like a film roll in my mind.

“Maybe, just maybe there’s some life left in these roots.”

—

I left to go on vacation for five days with my family. All of our housekeeping boxes had been checked and listed out - feed the dogs, give them cuddles, get the mail, etc. Everything was well in hand. At least, that’s what I thought until I returned.

The days were long and hot while we were gone - a fact that now greeted me at our door in the form of my shriveled Japanese ferns. We’d gotten them just a few weeks prior as strong adolescent plantings. Their beautiful, lush, dark green leaves and numerous fiddle heads promised a viable, healthy plant. Then, in a snap of the fingers, they were hit with five days without water in the grueling heat. I cradled their now brown and crunchy leaves in my discouraged hands.

Being someone that gets attached to plants - picking them on their personality and naming them as such - I was disheartened by the death of my beautiful ferns. Examining their stems, I brought them inside and sat them in our kitchen sink. “Maybe,” I thought to myself, “just maybe, there’s some life left in these roots.”

For the next few days I nursed them with small showers and filtered sunlight, being careful not to let the soil rot. I pulled the dead stems from the soil and plucked the dried leaves from the stems that held the most promise of maintaining life. My beautiful ferns were now poor little scraggly leaves on jagged stems surrounded by uprooted soil. I wasn’t sure if they were going to make it.

Especially amidst this pandemic, many of us small business owners know the sinking feeling of coming to the realization that something in our business - maybe even our business itself - has shriveled up. It seems like our once flourishing or growing businesses were on the incline to maintaining sustainability and then *wham*, we get hit with this intense and immediate upheaval of a pandemic that puts the pressure on us and takes away our lifeblood.

[Take a deep breath here if you need it. Lord knows, I did.]

The new growth on our Japanese fern, Hope. | Winston-Salem Brand Photography | Jasper & Fern

This drought has been hard to navigate for a lot of us. Many of us have been reduced, called to eliminate what no longer works and called to cultivate new growth in areas that aren’t necessarily our strong-suits or where we have our wealth of knowledge. I’ve seen my fellow small business peers roller-coaster about in this new work. I’ve seen them struggle and seen them triumph. I’ve seen businesses flourish and others close their doors forever. I’ve experienced it myself.

It’s been a tumultuous and demanding few months, many of us yearning for the strain to break.

I realized this morning, while pulling a few more dead stems from my ferns, that we’re all in the recovery process; a course that, no doubt, will continue to be long and arduous. This process though, carries hope and opportunity for growth in the right direction, just like I’ve seen with my ferns. After a month of vigilant care for my ferns, five new fiddle heads have begun to unfurl, a few stems have started to recover and green leaves have been growing steadily while the soil has started to become healthy again. It’s hard to ignore the parallel. We, as businesses and communities, now have an immediate opportunity to find new was to serve our clients, new ways to connect on a human level with each other; more opportunities to be compassionate, showing love and grace; more opportunities to step in and help our neighbor, to nurture and provide support in our immediate circles.

All these opportunities, the ways in which we can impact our community, will eventually spread their growth and begin to overlap borders, bonding in strength. The days will still be long and hot outside, but we can adapt together to create an environment that will continue to promote growth.

There's a fire that's burned since 1962 in a small town in Pennsylvania called Centralia. Originally a coal mining town, Centralia was once full of life. Nearly sixty years ago now, Centralia's thriving promise took a devastating turn when a coal vein caught fire. As coal veins run deep into the earth, the fire has had an endless source of fuel to feed on. Now, the town is mostly abandoned save a few dwindling members. The ground has become unstable the longer the fire has continued to burn out the layers beneath. The air constantly stinks of smoke and ash. It's truly a sorrowful situation.

We've all been wronged. We've all been betrayed and demeaned. Many of us have been hurt by our closest loved ones. That pain? It can run deep. There's a conscious moment where we decide what to do with our pain. We can either forgive and work through it or we can wallow in it and let it fester.

Festering pain leads to bitterness which will run deep within us, just like a burning coal vein. It will eat away at our joy, happiness and the positive aspects of who we are. If we let it, it will consume us. We will reek of anger and disparity repelling our friends and family. We will collapse from within and our lives will be hollow and lonely.

Forgiveness is powerful. It can be the more difficult choice but it is life changing. It releases you, it releases the person who wronged you. It builds your character and impact instead of tearing you down.

Bitterness is a choice just as much as forgiveness. If you don't release if, it's going to eat you away.