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. A legacy, of sorts.
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 and life that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together as well.
The pieces 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 and messy parts of our family life that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.
JULY & AUGUST
A double, bumper edition covering July and August in one post!
Summer has been… busy. And not-busy at the same time. Two opposites somehow managing to co-exist. I took July off work after reaching a point of burnout. I had every intention of using the time to focus on some important projects behind the scenes but my brain and body had other ideas and I ended up completely stopping – no therapy client work, no emails, no planning, no writing. In truth, I don’t think it was long enough. I only worked for two weeks in August and by the end of it I needed another break.
With the absence of work, it’s been a summer of adventure. And firsts. I think we took every possible mode of transport between us all over the last two months: aeroplane; car; bus; ferry; walking; tube; train; taxi… This kind of busy is the kind of busy that I love to do – the kind that energises rather than depletes. We visited Spain and, a little closer to home, the Isle of Wight, plus overnight trips to London and Chester.
Energy has been a big theme these last two months and I’m trying to pay attention to it, to notice the messages I’m getting from my body regarding when to slow down and when to go all-in. Slowing down is not something I’m particularly good at and I’m really starting to learn that sometimes those messages just keep on showing up more and more insistently in different ways until you acknowledge them. It’s led to a LOT of deep thinking about where to go and what to do from here.
And in the midst of it all I’ve been trying to seek out and hold onto those fleeting moments that really matter. It’s been a challenging time and I’ve often not felt like picking up my camera other than to document our holidays (and sometimes not even then). Photographs, for me, are a way of being able to revisit moments at any time so if I’ve felt a spark of something, anything, even if I wasn’t sure what it was, I seized it.
These images are the result. Our summer, wrapped up carefully, exactly as I saw it.
This was us, this summer…
