Into Something Better {Strathmere Beach, NJ, USA – June 2017}

 

Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,

She took me back so tenderly

Arranging her skirts

Her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before

A stone on the riverbed,

Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars,

But my thoughts.

And they floated light as moths

Among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

Breathing around me.

The insects and the birds

Who do their work in darkness.

All night I rose and fell,

As if water, grappling with luminous doom.

By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times

Into something better.

We as a group of artist mothers from all over the world are making it our priority to turn off the tv/video games so that we can give our children the sacred experience to connect with the fast disappearing natural world. We will freelens our adventures into the wild and share them through this monthly project.  The goal of this collaborative is to journey “Into Something Better”.

I can still remember quite clearly the first time I ever saw this place. I went with Daddy. We weren’t married yet. I met all of his family here. They had come together from all over the country to meet up on this island in New Jersey. For generations, Daddy’s family has been congregating in this magical place each Summer. I didn’t know then that daddy and I would one day be married and that we would have a family of our own to bring here every year. I hoped we would. But the future was so blurry back then. While it isn’t crystal clear even now, I do imagine it looking like this for many more years to come. And that causes my soul to soar.

 Continue around the blog circle with my talented friend in Maryland, Beth Urban.

a normal day

On October 18th, my daughter was born and I became the mother of three children. Hundreds of miles away, on the same day, another baby girl was born and another woman added the third child to her family. We were complete strangers at that time, but our love of photography and family brought us together. We started to have a conversation about motherhood with images, because we tell stories with our cameras. Since some tales are so similar, and some are not, we decided to collaborate and share a photo a week from a normal day as a mother to three.

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.”         – Mary Jean Irion

I was away from you all for nearly a week. In another country, across the Atlantic. The whole time I was there I was thinking about how much I wanted to show you everything I was seeing. That experiencing it without you made me feel a little hollow. I missed you all, but I also loved the missing you. It made me sharper in my seeing of the world and more appreciative of all I have to come back home to. Welcome home. 

photo by Olivia Gatti     website Facebook

Into Something Better {Great Smoky Mountains, NC, USA – May 2017}

 

Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,

She took me back so tenderly

Arranging her skirts

Her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before

A stone on the riverbed,

Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars,

But my thoughts.

And they floated light as moths

Among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

Breathing around me.

The insects and the birds

Who do their work in darkness.

All night I rose and fell,

As if water, grappling with luminous doom.

By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times

Into something better.

We as a group of artist mothers from all over the world are making it our priority to turn off the tv/video games so that we can give our children the sacred experience to connect with the fast disappearing natural world. We will freelens our adventures into the wild and share them through this monthly project.  The goal of this collaborative is to journey “Into Something Better”.

 

I have often seen photographers post photos of their children dressed in their finest attire sitting in a field of sunflowers or bluebells and always wondered where these magical fields were.  Had I found them, I am quite certain my children would never allow me to dress them up or make them sit still.  That just isn’t them or me.  Instead, we all delighted in a field of weeds while my children chased butterflies with their fishing nets.  Each child dressed for a different season.  This is us.  And I love it so.

This next photographer leaves me in awe of the freelensing goodness that she creates.  Continue around the blog circle with my talented friend Nikki Frettsome in magical Cornwall England.

a normal day

On October 18th, my daughter was born and I became the mother of three children. Hundreds of miles away, on the same day, another baby girl was born and another woman added the third child to her family. We were complete strangers at that time, but our love of photography and family brought us together. We started to have a conversation about motherhood with images, because we tell stories with our cameras. Since some tales are so similar, and some are not, we decided to collaborate and share a photo a week from a normal day as a mother to three.

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.”         – Mary Jean Irion

photo by Heather Robinson     blog | Facebook

Caught her in the light for one shot as she headed off to school this morning. She’s only just 10, but I can see the woman she’ll be in her poise and movements. This shot was simply needed to freeze her like this for me, for always.

photo by Olivia Gatti     website Facebook

the effect of her being

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive:

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;

and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been,

is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life,

and rest in unvisited tombs.”

– George Eliot, Middlemarch

Heather Robinson

blog | Facebook

Amanda Voelker

website | facebook