Two days shy of three weeks ago, I had a complete hysterectomy. They took everything. While medically justified due to family history, they did find problems with both ovaries in surgery that made it apparent they did indeed need to come out. The decision was made initially because I just wanted to prevent problems as I got older, so the timing of the ovarian problems was just a happy coincidence.
The first three or four days were the worst, though the physical pain hasn’t been too bad overall. Now I struggle with the not doing too much, as I feel called now to do things like purge my house of unnecessary clutter and potentially rearrange furniture.
I feel like I should be lamenting the loss of my ability to have more children, but the reality is, I have been mourning that loss of ability for the better part of a decade.
Our youngest son was a surprise pregnancy and I was so traumatized by that pregnancy that I not only got my tubes tied, I insisted on my husband having his own procedure, too. But after the dust had cleared from those procedures, and after I realized that yes, I can be a successful stay at home mom to toddlers, I regretted that sterilization choice.
So, I have been mourning the loss of my fertility for most of a decade so it doesn’t feel that jarring now that it is permanently impossible to have more children.
My husband and I have three beautiful, wonderful, brilliant, kind, and funny boys. I treasure each of them.
In reality, this whole procedure, assuming the rest of recovery goes smoothly, feels like a big gift to myself, not a loss at all. No more periods; immediate menopause so no more years of the back and forth wondering when menopause will come.
I’ve been walking a little with Jared most days at the Marina, and yesterday I started doing my lying chest fly exercises that I love to help my chest and back– they are part of my physical therapy exercises and it felt so good to ease back into them. And I got clearance to drive last Thursday, so I have my freedom again.
Here’s to hoping the remainder of my recovery goes smoothly.
I’ve been struggling with my identity lately, and I know why.
In early adulthood, I associated my identity with my profession. It was not a healthy association, I realize, but it’s what happened.
And then, I qualified for SSDI based on my mental health needs. And so all of a sudden, there was no professional life, and no prospect for one.
And then, I found photography as a mental health outlet.
But then, I took on the idea that I should be a professional photographer, that THAT should be my professional life and identity.
And for the better part of eight years on and off, I have somewhat pigeonholed myself into a part-time version of just that: professional photographer.
Except, now it’s time to do away with the photography business.
I have considered selling some of my gear and downgrading to less bulky and expensive gear in the aftermath, both to pay down some debt but also to sort of step away from the role of professional, in gear as well as identity.
But the reality is: I will always be a photographer, whether I make any money from the endeavor, or not. It’s part of who I am at this point.
And, I absolutely adore my cameras. They are big, but they are big because they are medium format and as far as medium format goes, they are not that big.
And I love the bokeh, and all my lenses– both brand and adapted.
Jared and I have taken a number of steps in the past month to be much more fiscally responsible. Closing down the photography business will help with that, as well. The best thing I can do is not acquire more gear, and continue enjoying and using the equipment I have. Offloading even a portion wouldn’t help in the ways I wish, as trading out gear is always a losing proposition – I definitely know that by now.
It’s hard to quantify and medical and pet expenses made it such that last month we still spent more than planned. But in the last month we have eliminated YouTube TV, Netflix, eight other entertainment type memberships, we spent $501.59 less in groceries between April and May, we spent $52.12 less in eating out. I made the decision this weekend to migrate the hosting of this website to another much cheaper service and that saved us another $100 a year.
We’ve made pretty immediate progress on getting our spending in order and that is much needed and promising. Our spending has long been out of control and the photography business contributed greatly to that end, unfortunately. It is no exaggeration to say that we incurred significant costs to support my business expenses, unfortunately.
It is rather astounding though: I have been shooting with my GFX 50sIIs (well, one of them anyway) for 3.5 years. That’s longer than I have stuck with any single camera ever, since the original Sony Alpha NEX 5N. So there is some progress there, at least.
This identity struggle though: it is rough. I struggle to embrace the role of housewife and mother. I’ve raised a grown son and have another teen and a tween too, and the role of mother has never really felt completely natural, truth be told.
And I do know why it is: I idolized my grandmother and my aunt and my mother, and they all worked their whole lives.
It does not feel natural that I should not do the same. Even though Jared tells me it is fine that I do not, and that my value to him and to our family is in no way tied to my income.
So anyway, that’s the core of one of my major life’s struggles. I do not know if I would struggle in the same way if money were easier for us or not. I like to think that if we didn’t struggle with money, I would worry less about working. But somehow, I suspect that isn’t as relevant an issue as I often believe.
But, at least for today, I’ve settled the issue of whether I should keep the gear, and whether or not at my core I am still a photog.
Also, as an aside: Jared had the idea (that has given him much laughter over the last several days) at the Marina a few days ago that we should make a Duck Butt Blog. It came about when I was bemoaning the fact that the ducks were all putting their heads underwater to fish the other night, making them less picturesque. So I took photos of them with their heads underwater.
So, I came home, and not an hour and a half later, https://duckbutt.blog came into being. It’s a thing and will be an ongoing project. It makes Jared exceedingly happy to have this project even though I am the one who is doing the work, and apparently there is an audience for such, judging by the reaction on WordPress.
Us at Lovely Lane Chapel at Epworth-By-The-Sea on April 2, 2025
This Spring was hard. As such, I was quiet about writing about some of the best parts of this Spring. It’s been mostly about survival mode in these parts.
I realized earlier that life got in the way and I never posted about our 20th anniversary trip to St. Simons!
On April 2, Jared and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. We decided to commemorate the occasion by staying 2 nights at The Queen’s Court, at St. Simons. We got married at Lovely Lane Chapel at Epworth-By-The-Sea on April 2, 2005.
Jared’s lone request for the trip for himself was the selfie of us, above. It’s a re-creation of a photo from our wedding day. I set up the tripod, got Jared in place, set the self-timer, and ran down to get in the shot and we snagged this shot in one try. As I packed up the tripod, the Epworth bells were tolling noon.
My caption for the photo above on Facebook was, “I am home.” It truly felt that way.
20 years later, the wedding dress fit! Tried it on the weekend before our anniversary.
And yes, at home before we went on our trip, I did get out the dress because I wasn’t sure but I’d had a several years-long dream of fitting into my wedding dress on our 20th anniversary. And the zipper is actually broken on the dress such that it will no longer zip up all the way, but yes, it did fit. Jared snapped the photo above the Saturday before our anniversary.
hello@carolineprice.com
Jared wanted the Lovely Lane re-creation photo, but this is the photo I wanted: us close to the St. Simons Village. The beach is no longer accessible from the Village so we walked down beyond the Methodist Church for the beach access for this shot.
That part of the St. Simons trip made me sad. I’ve known since I was a child that the south end of the island is washing to the north end of Jekyll, and climate change has surely accelerated that process. But it occurred to me on this trip that it might happen during my lifetime that the St. Simons Island Village is no longer the tourist spot that it’s been my whole lifetime. And that makes me sad, since I grew up going there literally every 4th of July of my childhood.
by Bailey Martin
This was us sitting on the far side of the pier the night of April 1, shortly after we checked into the Queen’s Court….this sweet girl named Bailey came up to us after we got up and told us she’d taken this shot and got my email and sent it to me the next day. It was indeed a very beautiful evening, and that whole side of the pier was empty at the time. A magical memory.
I snapped this selfie of us after the more posed shot with my tripod, before we left the beach close to the Village the morning of our anniversary.
The evening of our anniversary, we rode over to Jekyll. It was the very first time I ever remember ever going to Driftwood Beach and it was a gorgeous evening.
It was a relatively quick 2-day trip; we arrived the evening of April 1 and walked down to the pier and had dinner at Brogen’s, where we’d hung out with friends after our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on April 1, 2005, and then after photos on the morning of April 2, we drove around the island a little bit. Discovered there is the cutest little Goodwill boutique on the island now and I scored a very cute (if impractical) vintage purse that just needed a little bit of love to get it back into working order.
We ate an early dinner at Barbara Jean’s in the Village on the 2nd and after our nap (because we are indeed old people now) went over to Jekyll. After Driftwood Beach we had a quick ice cream at the Jekyll DQ before headed back to SSI.
By the morning of the 3rd, I was ready to get back to our boys so we hit the road pretty early.
It was a very nice, if accidental, touch that the Queen’s Court had put us in their Room 20 for our 20th anniversary.
(An Aside: I love that when they remodeled several years ago that the Queen’s Court kept the light-up sign from forever ago, and I love the new wall that surrounds the pool. I learned how to swim in that very pool when I was 7 years old. And, I loved that in the office they were selling $4 keychains in the exact same shape as the old keychains they used to use for the room keys back when we stayed there when I was a child…..of course I had to have one. It’s blue whereas the ones they used when I was a kid matched the green in the sign in the photo above, but it has to be sourced from the same place because it’s the exact same shape otherwise.)
I took my camera but the trip was not a big photo expedition. This was the lone scenic type photo I shot, on the evening of April 1 before dinner, probably before Bailey took that photo of us above. It’s startling to me how high the rocks have been piled now, and how there is no beach access from this area now at all. I very much wanted this shot to remember this evening, this exact way the island was at that moment in time, for the future.
This was a beautiful getaway to celebrate 20 years with my Jared. On that sunny morning in April of 2005, I really had no idea what lay ahead of us. I am humbled and grateful that we have this beautiful life together, with our three beautiful children.
You can read more about why I write about my wonderful life here.
My aunt and uncle and cousins sent me the beautiful flowers in the photos above, having had them delivered Friday. So beautiful!
I didn’t feel up to trying to get out the camera to photograph them until this afternoon, and it is clear that carrying my camera in my purse for the next six weeks is simply not an option at all.
All in all though, recovery is going well even though I’m only 3 days out from surgery. Pain is already almost non-existent and I’m going to attempt to sleep through the night tonight without waking up for pain meds. And, I’ve avoided the strongest prescribed option for pain so far altogether, which I am much relieved about.
These photos were taken with the GFX 50sII and my prized Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux Ultra 85mm f2 MC lens. I love that my favorite lens was made to be an IMAX lens.
Emily P Freeman always cites Barbara Brown Taylor when she talks about “Things that are saving my life right now,” and it seems fitting to talk about the things that are saving my life right now:
My gratitude list is at the top of that list of things that are saving my life right now. For a while I was publishing my gratitude lists both here and on social media. But it’s true that most days I itemize 50 different things or people or situations that I am grateful for. Keeping up with cultivating that grateful attitude really does help my mental health.
In the interest of complete honesty with regard to the hysterectomy: the best investment I made prior to the hysterectomy was purchasing the 7.98 yoga pants that I found at Walmart two nights before surgery. While pain is minimal, swelling is rough and finding pants that have a very, very forgiving waistline has made all the difference, for sure.
Having the surgery just before a holiday weekend means that Jared has been available for longer than he otherwise would have been, which has been a relief.
Google Gemini has been an interesting tool for several months now. I’ve used it to plot blog ideas, Gemini helped me redesign this very blog down to color schemes for the links. I considered moving domain names away from my own name and Gemini helped me lay out the pros and cons of each, leading me to keep my own name as the current domain name. And that’s just only two examples…..there have been endless examples since I started using Gemini probably last October or so.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy techniques are also saving my life right now. I’ve long known to tell myself that “I am not my illness,” but I recently started reading The Happiness Trap. The psychological flexibility that I hope will come from separating myself from my thoughts and feelings I do think may actually change my life forever.
As always, I continue to work on processing past trauma and what I am finding through my meditation and gratitude practices along with the techniques like cognitive defusion that I am learning about….all of that is helping me to learn to live in the present. Which makes nights like tonight, when Jared and I went to sit at the Marina for a while, all the more precious.
Thanks for reading! You can read more about me here. Later!
