mom is just another word for love.

Momma,

Happy Mother's Day. You've been having Mother's Days for a quarter of a century. (Sorry, did that make you feel old? :P) Thank you for everything you have done for me, ma. You have shaped me into the woman I am today and I would be absolutely nowhere without the strength and bravery and truly unconditional LOVE you have shown me throughout the years. 

Do you remember your first Mother's Day, 26 days after I was born? I was still in the hospital fighting for my life and you drove almost an hour every day to visit me. To make sure I was okay. To make sure I wasn't alone. Even in my infancy when I'm sure your world was rocked upside down and everything felt more backwards than ever, you showed me what it means to be strong. To have a purpose. To fight for something bigger than yourself. 

Do you remember when I was in high school, and we were fighting our demons side by side? I think we taught each other the lessons we needed to learn on bravery. Me speaking up about mine may have influenced you to do the same about yours (I'll never know for sure), but then your actions after—the fighting back, the take charge war cry of happiness vs. fear—they inspired me to speak up even louder. 

Do you remember the day I came home crying after newspaper, part paralyzed by fear and anxiety and part furious because Cody was still participating in a high school club after he graduated? Do you remember going into Mama Bear mode? You turned to me and said, "I need you to go look up the number to the high school. I'm making a few phone calls." 

I cannot thank you enough for those phone calls, mom. Even though we were ultimately let down (and I'M STILL BITTER about it 8 years later), you showed me the importance of having passion and standing up for the things you believe in. 

I have taken all of these lessons, the big ones as well as the little ones, and created a life that I am proud of living. I hope one day I will be able to express how much I love you and just how much you mean to me. I hope one day I will be able to give you the world. But until that day comes, I will write you letters on Mother's Day. You done good, momma. 

I love you. xo

(PS—MOM, what the hell are these glasses?!)

 

oldie but a goodie

July 21, 2010 — every time i go to the library, i make it a ritual to walk up and down the aisles, running my hands along the books before i look for anything specific. tonight i happened to find the book reckless driver by lisa vice, and an unquiet mind: a memoir of moods & madness by kay redfield jamison, which was a recommendation made to me by my therapist. i'm excited to read them after i finish extremely loud & incredibly close by jonathan safran foer.

Looking back at my first 365 always makes me at least seven different kinds of nostalgic. This was a good memory to come back to, especially because going to the library always reminds me of my grandma. When I was little, I would always try to bring home a stack of books as tall as I was. She always set a limit of 5 books, and she always promised we could come back for the rest of the library after I finished those 5 books. 

I miss my grandma. 

throwback

I was going through my Flickr archives last night, paging through all the photos from my first 365 one by one. I would love to get back to this point with photography and self portraiture again. Where I love it so much I live, eat, sleep and breathe it.

Note to self: MAKE TIME FOR MAKING. You'll thank yourself for it later. 

hug your mom tight today

Momma,

Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for teaching me what it means to be a strong, independent woman. Thank you for cleaning up my messes and being strict when you needed to be and putting up with all my crap for the last 23 years. Thank you for all the Roseanne and Golden Girls marathons. Thank you for teaching me how to love the Packers (even if it took 20 years). Thank you for supporting me through everything, even if you don't like what I do. Thanks for being my mom. I love you. 

xo, Your favourite daughter  

throwback thursday

I was born at 27 weeks. I was 2 lbs. 13 3/4 in. long when they pulled me from my momma, which is why I'm so small even still at 2 months old. 

Teething & chewing on my first steak bone. 

These were taken at the same portrait studio I worked in from 2011-2013(!)

Walworth county fair with my cousins 

The only summer with the trampoline. We used to put the sprinkler under it and run around before the pool opened. 

Helping my dad or my grandma (?) take leaves to the dump. 

First day of Kindergarten.

The best part about going home for my birthday was getting to look through all the albums upon albums of baby pictures my parents took of me as I was growing up. I had like a permanent smile on my face as I remembered Easters and Christmases and summers spent at the pool with my cousins. I love my family so much and I'm so happy I have so many pictures of my childhood to remember the little things by. 

flashback

Something I learned this weekend: things never go as planned. Instead of going to Burlington, I spent most of my Friday night at a diner in Fond du Lac waiting for my uncle to pick me up. Long story short is that I don't have a car for the time being. An even shorter story is that when I'm stranded in strange places I don't know very well, there's a pretty good bet you can find me heading into the restroom to take selfies to calm myself down.

Exhibit A: Friday night, stranded in Fond du Lac
Exhibit B: November 2011, stranded in the Savannah airport overnight

Week 43/52

oldies

1) charlotte airport, november 2010 // 2) backyard daisies, june 2012 // 3) yosemite national park, march 2013 // 4) flying over san francisco, march 2013 (download as a wallpaper HERE) // 5) on the way to the airport selfie, march 2013

I've been searching through the archives lately and I'm loving what I overlooked the first time around.

wtw '09

Four years ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Lake Forest Writing and Thinking Workshop at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, IL. I met so many creative people and made a handful of friends that are still a part of my life today. That two week workshop is forever remembered on Facebook as "the greatest two weeks of my entire life."

WTW was the first time I had ever been away from home for an extended period of time. It was my first time having a roommate and suitemates. It was the first time I came out and said, "Hey! I'm not going to be a victim anymore!" after a very long and hard year for me.

The workshoppees spent 5 hours every day writing, writing, writing. The hand cramps were legendary, second only to the hand cramps I got after completing the AP English Literature exam in 2010. My notebook is still sitting within my bookshelves at home, my seventeen year old self forever embodied in its pages.

We took field trips to Evanston, Andersonville, and downtown Chicago. There was a sunrise workshop on the beach. I shot 8 rolls of film in the two weeks we were there, my trusty Minolta Maxxum XPsi never as far from me as a pen was.

I can't believe this was all four years ago already.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back and do everything all over again: writing until my hand cramped, texting late into the night with friends from home because I had so much to say, taking so many pictures, burying Stephen in the sand, playing James Bond (only the greatest card game known to man), the 5 hour long game of Uno, hiding all of my suitemate's stuff and making her believe that her mom was coming to pick her up a week early, staying up all night the last night because nobody wanted to leave.

I'd do everything all over again in a heartbeat.

oldies

i'm so sorry i've been neglecting this blog lately. i haven't been shooting since school started (for everyone but me) so i've been editing old photos that i overlooked the first time around.

my neighborhood block party is on sunday, so i'm sure y'all can expect photos from that later on this week. :)

xo, anna