Tag: Mental Health

  • changes

    I’ve been quiet since Friday. 

    I’ve been introspective. And depressed. And busy.  

    We went to pick Porter up yesterday in Athens. Today, Jared and I cleaned house all day long to prepare for tonight. Our house is not embarrassing finally, if we have guests.  

    Tonight, we decorated for Christmas. My Rich’s Richie Bear and Priscilla Pig stuffed animals came out for the decorations for the first time in our married lives since Porter was an infant and too tiny to hurt them.  

    We got Nannie’s ceramic tree decorated. I pulled out my Rudolph collection of stuffed animals and Jared’s sweet Mama’s Christmas woodcarvings and stockings.  

    We ate dinner, the five of us having Jared’s famous grilled cheese sandwiches, and then we had an outing for milkshakes at Chick-fil-a because it is peppermint milkshake season.. Except for Oliver, who doesn’t like sweets, so he had an eight count nugget because two grilled cheese sandwiches were not enough for an 11-year-old boy.  

    And somewhere over the past week, I remembered that I missed taking pictures for other people and I’d like to be able to do it again. I really enjoyed the maternity session with the Cinelux lenses. 

    And so, things are in the works. A new page is on this site. There is a new domain name also pointing to that page and a new instagram site that has been held for about a year or more, waiting for something to do.  

    And yes, a new LLC has been filed for, waiting for approval. Business expenses will be kept to an absolute minimum, no new equipment is required.

    The idea is a completely artistic-driven portrait experience. One that I don’t pay to support, fees that support a living wage. Portraits will be made exclusively with my existing Cinelux and Minolta lenses, with my GFX50sII.

    I may never get a client and that’s okay, but I’m going to create the kind of art that feeds me. I have a clear artistic voice waiting to scream out in my head and it’s high time that I fed that vision.

    It’s time.

  • protein bar in the bed kind of morning

    I don’t take photos like this very often. But as I draft this post it is 11:18 AM and I am eating my favorite kind of Kirkland protein bar in the bed. Because it is that kind of morning.

    And as it happens, I went to bed in the most awfully despondent kind of mood last night. The kind where I become uber dramatic and morose about the future; I will not repeat what was said.

    It was the kind of morning where I did not set an alarm; Jared woke me up long after he’d woken the boys up, to get me to take my morning medicines. He knew he had to do this because if he did not, I might or might not actually take said medications (note: it was my thyroid meds so the likelihood of me taking them was high. But still).

    And because Jared loves me and spoils me rotten, for breakfast because he knew comfort foods were in order, he brought me a baggie of Cheez-It’s and my favorite Kirkland Chocolate and Peanut Butter Protein Bar.

    And I promptly fell back asleep until after 10 AM.

    Because it’s difficult to maintain hope right now.

    But, I do have two goals for today:

    1. finish the stitching on my newest jute bag’s liner
    2. Get my jewelry collection back in order, because it is in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about it.

    That’s true, actually, about our house and my body, too; both are in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about either of them.

    Jared told me, as he frequently does, to “be kind to yourself” before he left.

    So that’s today’s goal. Even if today is starting at 11:28 AM.

  • bet my back is more messed up than yours

    I referred to it a little on the 12th but last week, on the 12th, I had a check-up with my orthopedic PA.

    I’m not really sure why I even go. It’s not like there’s more surgery I will ever let them do to me, even if my neck discs are seriously degenerating.

    The photo above is my back as it looked on x-ray on Wednesday, November 12. 

    It’s pretty crazy. 

    And that whole top curve wasn’t there when I was a teenager or young adult. I assume that is what 4 pregnancies (yes, there were 4 even though there are only 3 boys) and years upon years of laying-in-the-bed-depressed depression will do to me with my brand of scoliosis.

    The only real comment the orthopedic PA made was that indeed, there is significant degeneration in the discs in my neck. Such that actually, there was a blank space where there should have been a disc at the base of my neck in front, actually. 

    That’s probably why my neck hurts when I transition from standing or sitting to lying down in the bed. 

    And maybe I should feign terror at the utter basic breakdown that is my spine, that is my body.

    But to be honest, it’s just my normal. I’ve dealt with this since I was 6 years old, way back in the back brace days.

    At least I’ve spent the vast majority of my life without the large lumbar hump that was on the left side of my back as a kid.

    My orthopedic PA says she doesn’t measure degrees. She says she’ll know when she should refer me to her surgeon, and he’ll measure degrees then. She knows– rightly– that people obsess over degrees of curvature when– also rightly– degrees don’t necessarily mean a damn thing, especially when there’s rotation or some other such craziness going on.

    She didn’t say this time, though, that she’d never see me needing surgery again.

    Not sure I would do it though. I’d have to be in an awful– a very awful– amount of pain to agree to give up the mobility I have in my upper back and neck, and that’s what would happen with more fusions.

    I’ve had probably 2% of progression in the last two years. She says that’s pretty stable for my particular situation. So much so, that she won’t worry about x-rays when I come back next year.

    I did get another referral for physical therapy. I still know a lot of the exercises I was taught last year but I haven’t been super reliable about it since I got depressed and had very bad mental health in the Spring and summer. And of course, I did have a whole hysterectomy in May.

    All you people with normal bodies, it must be nice.

    When I look at this photo of my x-ray though, it makes complete sense as to why I have mental health issues AND why I have been the object of not-nice men.

    Easy to prey on the already weakened.

    As my oldest would say, “It is what it is.”

  • I love cinelux lenses!

    I did a very brief maternity session yesterday. As predictable, I am hopeless with poses, so I looked at my phone constantly. Here is what I came up with though:

    Jared says I will grow to resent being the free photographer around these parts. What I know is that I came home way not stressed at all about how these turned out, so when they turned out well I was just thrilled.

    It does beg the question though: can I really do sessions with only Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux projection lenses on my GFX 50sII?

    Whatever the case, right now I do not regret selling the lenses I sold and I am very happy with my kit.

    And it felt good to spend all of about 15-20 minutes doing a session and come up with these as the result.

    Thanks so much to Kaitlyn and Jonathan for playing along with my experiment.

    This session just makes me want to book more sessions. Reach out if you’re interested in something like this!

    You can read more about me here.

  • laundry day is probably going to be four days long

    The title says it all.

    On Sunday evening, October 19, I threw in a load of laundry. I knew I’d be busy on dedicated laundry day, Monday the 20th, so I was trying to get ahead so my whole routine wouldn’t be blown to smithereens.

    I was fooling myself. Not because the premise of the idea wasn’t good, but because Monday the 20th threw me into a whirlwind of emotions I can only tangentially talk about at the moment. Mostly self-destructive despair and self-loathing.

    I think I actually did a load of laundry on the 20th, or I actually switched the laundry, early that morning.

    And, maybe three loads of laundry have gotten done since then. Maybe four.

    Monday is still laundry day. But, I am starting laundry day today, on Saturday, so that maybe laundry day will be done by Tuesday or early Wednesday– we have that much laundry. If I finish it on Monday, all the better but I am not holding my breath.

    Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean was the first person who I listened to about laundry day. My aunt said years ago she tried to tell me once it would be easier to just have a laundry day when the boys were little, but I have no memory of that.

    But, Dana says that a first laundry day, in no way, is likely to be only one day if you have an actual family you are doing laundry for.

    And in my experience, she’s 100% right.

    So, here I am, it’s 12:46 PM on Saturday November 8, 2025, and I am started Monday’s the 10th’s laundry day at 11:30 this morning.

    Because I was doing pretty good before the 20th. And I feel pretty good this morning, aside from feeling like my routine is gone to crap.

    And, this afternoon, there is a maternity session and it is exclusively a Cinelux lens maternity session. I am taking along the Minolta lens just in case I need it, but I don’t anticipate needing it. A former bride approached me about maternity photos several months ago, about the time I was shutting down the business and sold the bulk of my lenses, and I turned them down. But I reached out later and showed her some of the photos with the lenses and told her it wouldn’t be a typical session but that I was willing to do it for free if I could use these lenses and use them for my portfolio, and she agreed. So here we are, and it is a beautiful day with perfect weather, and I get to have a Cinelux session.

    The idea was that if the photos turned out, I might decide to take on limited Cinelux sessions in the future.

    I already used this lens once in a session, a few years ago now. I just chickened out and got complacent with my autofocus lenses.

    I forgot to slow down and enjoy photography.

    And, for the occasion, I downloaded again the UnScripted app, my posing Bible I used for so very long. I am very excited about the poses I found.

    Eight years in, I no longer feel any shame whatsoever in the fact that coming up with natural poses on my own is no, in fact, natural for me.

    But, I found the UnScripted app when it was first barely out of beta, brand new, years ago and it has served me very well. I paid for a lifetime membership around 2020 in fact, when it was dirt cheap– definitely not what it is now. It was probably 1/5 of what it is now — at $499– or else I wouldn’t have paid for it at all.

    Looking back on this week: there were nerves about the potential health scare. There was leftover fallout from meeting with someone I shouldn’t have on October 20. There was fallout from having told that person exactly what I think of them in writing since apparently I am incapable of doing so to their face though at least I can, indeed, face them. But, also: the time change hit me really, really hard, really, really suddenly.

    I do not do well with limited daylight hours. Which is why I use a light therapy lamp to begin with.