I take hundreds of photos every month, and most of them don’t get shared with anyone, let alone online. And yet the moments in time that those photos capture are just as important a part of our story as the other images that I do choose to share.
I originally created this blog as a way of documenting our lives, a way of watching the girls grow into who they’re going to be and a way of remembering who they once were. It’s something I want them to be able to look back on as they get older, because memories fade but (digital) photographs don’t.
It’s easy (and tempting) to only focus on sharing the fun bits, the memorable parts, the highlights and the celebrations. But I’m learning more and more as I continue through this crazy journey of motherhood that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together as well.
The bits of the jigsaw that fill in the gaps to complete the picture. The tantalising glimpses into who our girls are becoming. The chaos, the calm and all the moments in between.
This monthly feature – The Moments In Between – is a space for me to share all of those magical bits that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.
FEBRUARY
February seemed to disappear amidst a deluge of rain, ferocious storms and a whole host of things going wrong in our house. Half term was quiet (gleefully so on the part of the girls, reluctantly so on my side of things). To be honest I’m quite glad this month is over and for once I don’t actually have much to say about it.
I’m grateful to have documented these moments. Thankful that they are captured forever. The ordinary moments in between the mess and the cabin fever, the grumpiness and the tiredness. Doing homework. Cuddles on the sofa. Slow mornings. Escaping for a tiny bit of fresh air the second the rain finally stopped for an hour.
Chapter two of 2020 is over, I have these images to remember it by and we’re edging closer towards Spring, which makes my heart very happy indeed.
It may have been a difficult month but I still want to remember every detail, every movement, every gesture and expression, from every image. The exact reason why I pressed the shutter in that moment. The thoughts I was thinking and the feelings I was feeling. The words that were said. Precisely where we were in that particular moment.
It’s my role to document the difficult as well as the fun, the hard days as well as the joyful ones. They’re just as much a part of our story and they deserve to be shown too. Actually, they need to be shown. Because life does get hard sometimes. Things aren’t perfect. We lose our way and have to figure out how to work our way back to each other again in order to reconnect. Those are the real moments, the ones I’m most interested in seeing. Tiny glimpses into our story.
They’re so much more than just photographs. They all have a significance for me far deeper than the surface level of what you see. Every single one brings back layers and layers of meaning, not just of the moment in the picture but of moments gone before and now, looking back at them, the moments that came afterwards too.
Every single one speaks to me in so many ways.
Every single one is a piece of our jigsaw.
Every single one is like a word in a sentence in a chapter of our life story.
This is us.
