hello, from me.

hello.  it's me.  jennifer.  here's a little about me to begin.

I was born in a rural small town in Maryland on the East coast of the United States.  I live in that same town right now about twenty minutes from my childhood home.  I am the oldest child of three.

I don't have a specifically big family, but we are all right here so sometimes it seems that way.  I love my family more than anything in this whole wide world.   Family=Love.   It means so much to me to be able to sit on my mother's porch, drink a glass of wine with my brother and sister and laugh the night away in the place I started to become.  I live on the land of my Great-Grandparents, right next to my Grandparents, who I have had a close bond with since I was just a wee thing.  It was in this place that my Grandfather chased me around the yard with his camera and my Grandmother rocked me in her rocker, patting me on the back and singing to me.  And it is here in this place that I chase my children (and sometimes sneak up on the same Grandfather) with my camera, and where I hush my girls to calm.  Still to this day, sometimes I want to sneak into my Grandfather's old dark room or walk up the path, climb on my 80 year old Grandmother's lap and have her pat me on the back and sing to me on a really bad day. I make do with sneaking down the path from her house with a slice of homemade pumpkin pie.

It is a house of girls here where I live.  Even the dog, the cat and the rabbit are female.  But really it's the place I make home with my two girls (Emily, age 10 and Karelyn, age 8).  I became divorced in 2007 after almost eleven years of marriage.  My ex-husband battled addiction based on medical problems.  In 2006 we pretty much lost everything, and well, I started over.   Alone.  Well, not really alone, because there are the girls, and then of course, there's that family I was just talking about.

Getting divorced, changed my life.  I was miserable and defeated in that marriage, battling to overcome an addiction that held onto him stronger than I could.  I battled myself with depression and anxiety.  I never in a million years imagined I would be raising two children by myself.  In ways it's not so hard as I was scared it was going to be, but it's so hard some days I lock myself in the bathroom for a good cry.  My girls mean everything to me and sometimes it's hard to give them everything I think they deserve.

The year after I left the marriage I picked up my camera.  Then in another year, I got a bigger, nicer, camera.  Now it's hard to find me without my camera.  I think my camera has given me a different look at the world and also of myself (see goofy self-portrait above).  Shooting photos and writing my thoughts down are my therapy and my passion.

I have a lot of hopes and a lot of dreams.  Sometimes I get so filled up with them I think I might float away in excitement.  Other times the thought of reaching them makes me want to run in the other room and hide away.  I am a true Pisces (though not a huge believer in Astrology) in that I get really, really excited about ideas and projects and then turn tracks halfway when some other sparkly idea catches my eye making me run off and start another route.  I am apparently a great "starter of things".  I am hoping to become a better "finisher of things".

When we met we made a list of hopes and dreams.  Do you remember?  It was last year.  Do you still have yours handy?  I want to go back now and revisit what your dreams were so that I remember.  I want to write about them now, but feel it would best be posted another day.   I do know that I am glad that our dreams brought us together this way and we get the opportunity to take this journey together.