ramblings

proud parent right here

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I had one of those rare moments today where I felt like I might actually be doing something right with my parenting. You know, most days are just a mish mash of trying to organise children, trying to get them from A to B without losing your shit, trying to locate lost shoes for the 700th time in an hour, trying to keep your cool, trying to get them to eat something – anything – vaguely nutritious in a 24 hour period. It’s chaotic, really. And some nights my head hits the pillow and I end up rehashing all the things I did wrong that day. I yelled too much. I accidentally swore at someone while driving. I shut myself in the bathroom for 5 minutes because they would not stop fighting. I feel like I didn’t give them enough love. There’s always something to criticize.

 

Today though, today was like… a little golden beam breaking through the worry of my potential failure at parenting. My eldest has quite a few new children in her class this year. Her best friends are still with her but a lot of the classes got mixed up together, which is fine. During her first week there were a few little incidents with a child she hasn’t had much to do with before. Let’s call this kid Sarah, just for ease of storytelling. Basically Sarah had a couple of little violent outbursts and hurt my daughter and her friends. It wasn’t anything unmanageable. It was handled really well by the teacher. But when Lacie came home and told me that someone had hurt her I felt myself go into panic mode. I was bullied as a kid, and it is my biggest fear that my children will go through that. Or, potentially worse, do that to someone else. It was really emotionally scarring what I went through and it has taken me a long time to work through some leftover issues from that. So when she told me what had happened I could feel my chest tightening and my hands go clammy and my mind started to swim with memories of things that happened to me.

 

Then she said to me “Sarah is just a really mean person”. My head instantly cleared and I stopped her there. My husband and I had a huge chat with her about how a naughty act doesn’t make a person bad, it’s just an act. It takes a lot more than that for someone to be a mean person. We talked about how it’s easy to judge someone based on one act but if that was the case then people would never get another chance. She has the occasional violent outburst herself, and we reminded her of that as well. It was a good talk and I could see she was processing everything we had gone over with her.

 

Today in the car after school, I asked her how her day was. I got the usual: “good”. A few moments later though, she announced that she and Sarah are now friends. I asked what had happened to turn things around and she said she had talked to her and reminded her that they played together sometimes last year and it would be nice if they could play together again instead of fighting. And it worked.

 

I swear my heart nearly exploded out of my chest. Here I had been worrying about how I should best be handling this, what we are supposed to do in this situation, what is the right thing to tell her… and my little 5 year old just walked right on up to this kid who was trying to hurt her friends and sorted it out. Just like that. Kids are freaking amazing!! And, not to take the credit away from her (because seriously – high fives all round in our house) but somewhere along the line we must have done something a little bit right with our parenting for her to be able to do that.

 

Crisis averted – phew!

 

Rach x

Almost 31: a reflection

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Tomorrow is my 31st birthday. Hip hip hooray! I’ve been thinking over the last week or so what this birthday means to me, and what the last year has brought for my life.

 

When I was in my early 20’s I’d see magazine articles saying that your 30’s are the best years of your life and so on. I used to think ‘pffft they are just reassuring themselves that they aren’t too old yet’. But you know what? It’s true. Turning 30 was no big stress for me. I don’t really think that your age has all that much to do with what you can fill your life with. But it was the start of an amazing year. We had only recently made our ‘tree change’ to the country so this year has been filled with all the adventures around that. We have made a new home for ourselves, planted an orchard, started growing our own vegies, are caring for goats (who are hopefully pregnant, fingers crossed!), sheep, chickens, getting ready to have a beehive, generally being more self sufficient. Our eldest daughter has started at school and it is going splendidly. This year, and being 30, has been about focusing on the important things. I suppose what is important to me has changed.

 

I discovered Taryn Brumfitt and the Body Image Movement during the last year. If you haven’t heard of it, please do yourself a favour and look her up. I don’t know if it’s turning 30 or something else, but I have ditched my negative mindframe about my body. I have been running (say what?!!) and seeing a personal trainer. And it’s not to lose weight, my focus is to be strong. I want to be fit and healthy for as long as possible so that I can continue enjoying my life and being here for my children. The size of my body and what it weighs is nothing to do with anything. If I can run around with my children, and swing them into my arms, and be here for them – that is what matters. I participated in my first ever City to Casino fun run, I walked most of the way but did run for a few short sections and am happy with the time it took me. I am sorting out my minor health issues. I have the most debilitating periods that leave me with low iron levels and wipe me out for at least 2 days a month and I have always just dealt with them, but I have realised that actually I don’t have to. I am looking forward to getting those under control!

 

My business has continued its journey to focus on mostly women’s beauty portraits. I love, love, love helping women see how beautiful they are. I am starting to spend more time on creative portraits as well – I think that working on personal projects helps me to find inspiration in all kinds of places which I can then use in my other work.

 

I’m pretty excited to see where the next year of being in my 30’s brings! But for now, I have some editing work calling my name 🙂

 

Rach x

Exist in photos

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There are many reasons why I am so passionate about working with women. I could go on and on about it, but rather than drown you in all that info at once, I will just pick out single reasons and write about those in individual posts!

 

So today, the reason I want to write about, is ‘to exist in photos’.

 

We are part of the selfie generation. I can remember getting my first phone, I was about 16. It was a Phillips Savvy. Do you remember those? We thought we were so awesome with those things. Didn’t even dream that one day we’d all have smartphones with inbuilt cameras, and the ability to take photos at any moment. At that time I was studying photography at college – on black and white film. But back to the point!

 

These days, a lot of us take photos daily. I do. I have almost 3000 photos on my phone (much to my husbands frustration, he is not as sentimental as I). But until recently, scrolling through those photos, none of them are of me. Yes, it’s my phone, so logically I would be taking the shots. There are hundreds of photos of my children. Some pretty landscapes. Things I don’t want to forget. Even pictures of clothes that I want to remember to go back and buy, tags with codes from Ikea so that I can order them later, photos of playdough creations my children have lovingly crafted. But where was I in all those photos? Where is the proof that I was there? That it was me shopping at Ikea, or me in those landscapes, or playing with my children? That it was me who made the playdough that the kids were creating with? I just wasn’t there. I didn’t do selfies, because I didn’t like the way I looked.

 

Then, over time, I realised. What if my time is suddenly up. What if tomorrow I am hit with some devastating news, and my whole life is turned around. What if I no longer look how I do now. Yes, I am overweight. I’m just stating a fact here. It’s one reason that I avoid being on the scary side of the camera as much as possible. My children don’t see me like that though. And I am healthy. I am well. I am not sick. What if all of a sudden something happened to me, and I no longer looked how I do today? Where would be the proof that I existed, as I am? Where would the photos be for my children to remember me by?

 

So from then, I decided to let my dislike for my body go. It wasn’t an easy overnight thing, and I am not all the way there yet. But I am in the process of loving myself. Because this is who I am. This is what I look like. It has absolutely zero importance on my life whether other people see me as beautiful or not. Because my children do, and my husband does. And these days, most of the time, I do. I notice the best parts of myself in the mirror and the ‘worst’ parts barely register. And I do my best to exist in photos, regularly, so that my children will have something to remember me by if and when I am gone.

 

They don’t have to be professional portraits, it can just be simple phone selfies. But please, for me, for you, for your family, exist in photos.

 

And to prove that this isn’t all just a load of waffle, here I am in various selfies with my littlest loves.

 

Rachel x

 

photo 1  photo 2

photo 3  photo 4

photo 5