all in a lifetime

Let’s start at the ending?

Sometimes that is exactly where the best stories begin after all…

Let’s start at the ending? Sometimes that is exactly where the best stories begin after all.
August of 2022 I wrote this letter to my sweet friends and customers about my studio:

”Photography was great for the last 2 decades. Oh, the adventures and stories I have! The insane amount of friends, the travel, the celebrities and amazing assignments...it's been such an amazing ride. I started my business 20 years ago with the money I received when my mother passed away.

I lost my mother, father, and all living grandparents over the course of 18 months. Brutal.

I always say they gave me one last and final huge gift....the gift of knowing at a young age that life is precious and short. I chose to start documenting my life and everyone around me.

Pictures. Take them all.

Daily...of everything. Document it because one day you will miss those mundane boring moments with the people you love and wish to just sit beside them again. You miss their face, their laugh, their love... you miss them to the depths of your soul and those pictures...well they are worth more than gold. And this was what started me down the path of opening a photography business in the first place all those years ago.

When Amber (my sister) died at the beginning of this year it was the thing that made picking that camera back up darn near impossible. As I combed through decades of documenting both of our families, finding images for her funeral, my heart somehow closed the door on my camera. It was like I had finished this job I had placed on myself to document my own family and others beautifully and now I had somehow crossed the finish line. My work was complete.

Here I sit...starting a new career, "barely in my 40's". I am embracing the fresh start.

The photography chapter of my life is done for now and I don't see it coming back. It will remain a fantastic hobby that I love though. You guys know I can't stop flying that drone especially!

I have stepped back into the crafting industry over the last few years. Some of you may remember my scrapbooking for publication days back before photography. Well here I sit, once again surround by paper, scissors, and making "all the things" but this time I am adding to it.

I have accepted a full-time inside sales position at a company for now. Who knows if it will be permanent but I will say I am thankful daily that God has given me the gift of careers doing the things I love and find joy in!

Not everybody gets that lucky. But here I sit.

Thankful for this one great life, its endless big stories, the people I love and a future that will continue to be ever-changing. I will just keep rolling with it.

Showing up over and over for whatever God sends my way.

It sure has been a wonderful few decades. Thank you guys for being part of it!”


Allow me to go back in time a bit and set the back drop.
2020 was absolutely brutal.
Within a 6 month time frame the world shut down due to the pandemic, my brick and mortar studio closed (nobody was bringing babies to be photographed during a pandemic after all), the man I had loved since I was 15 (married 24 years) decided he wanted to leave for a different life, 1 child flew the nest and moved to the other side of the country and 1 child flew the nest for college and the final blow—my sisters cancer came back and our time left was entirely too short.
To say that the life I loved was broken in a thousand tiny pieces at my feet would be a huge understatement.

I had lost everything I loved and cherished in just a few short months. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep and somehow I had to hold the kids and I’s worlds together. I wasn’t a stranger to loss and hard but I needed to get my feet back under me in this strange new life I had been thrown into. I had to figure out who I even was minus kids and a husband?
I had to start my life over and write a completely different book.

I found that traveling was my therapist. Each time my youngest would go to his father’s house for the weekend my drone and my hiking boots become my reminder that their was so much more to see and do yet in this life of mine. Simply put—I was just getting started writing this strange new book.
If you have ever “written a new life book” then you know the importance of quieting down the world around you.
The purposeful closing the door on the outside noise to gain focus, direction and true healing.
I needed to make my social media world small and create a new road map that protected the kids and I’s future until I had this new book mapped out a bit further.
So I did.

I walked away from the studio and started a new career in medical sales and for almost 3 years now I have proven to myself that I am actually pretty darn amazing at learning anything you put in front of me—in turn I am equally great at it and love my full time gig.
I still own and run The Inspired Poppy where I create paper products primarily and hand made items. I adore my little corner of the paper craft world.
I have learned so much about myself in these 5 beautifully wild years.

I fell in love with a wonderful man with a huge Italian family that took in the woman with very little family of her own.
Goodness I adore them all.
Rick started traveling with me in January of 2021 on all of my drone adventures and quickly became my drone “spotter” allowing me to fly further and develop my drone skills even more together. He is always my biggest cheerleader—not to mention love of my life.
Before we knew it we were “blending” our families and he even threw in a “surprise wedding” for us in April of 2023.
Crazy right? Having spent a decade in the wedding industry he knew I had zero desire to plan such a thing and took planning our wedding into his own hands—it was beautiful and fit us perfectly. Small and intimate.
Just the sort of weddings I seldom say “No” to photographing these days.
Big weddings? Nope I will refer you to some pretty talented photography friends but those small—run away marriages I will always be like “Sign me up!”. Goodness how we love run away weddings.
We continued to travel and I also have continued shooting sessions for most of my clients I had been with for so so very long.
After all they had become like my family as well. I have just kept it all pretty low key.
Enjoying my social media break for sure.

As the years have moved forward I have picked the camera up more and more again.
No longer saying no to “Can you do a session for us?”.
After shooting a wedding this Spring for a close family friend with a hard life story that included “You are the only one we trust to tell our story and fully understand and honor the emotions our day will bring.”
I realized that my work documenting others lives, especially the people I care about, is important work.

My photography work has purpose and heart.
While it is easy to document humans happiest moments in life I assure you that documenting my fellow humans hardest days takes a sort of empathy that only comes from someone who has lived all the hard themselves.
It’s the ability to not run from hard moments but straight into it with a respect, love and knowledge that this “heart work” is important. I can’t tell you how many hard NICU sessions, hospital bedsides and possible “last sessions” I have had the honor of documenting over the decades but I can tell you that there’s such a deep connection and bond with my clients in those moments.
There isn’t a dollar amount you can put on images that will be what remains when we no longer are here.

After all these years walking people into the world with my camera I find that I am often walking people I love out of the world as well with my camera. More so the older I get. It is so hard but so important.
I document our lives because in the end it matters more than I ever thought it would.
The circle of life and study of humanity has been my life’s work.
My images share the story of all of our lives one beautiful click at a time. Beginning to end.
Here is what I have learned from all of it…
In this life we are darn lucky if years after we are gone our picture hangs on someone’s wall that loved us. I want to take those meaningful images for my clients, friends and family likely until the day I walk off this earth myself or my hands simply can’t hold a camera anymore.

This time around I am not worried about money or winning any awards. I am more interested in just continuing to document the world around me and ensuring that every family in front of me has beautiful portraits of a life well lived.
I know the true value of what these images will mean one day and it is priceless.