MOTHERS DAY

I’m feeling a bit selfish today.  I had the purest of intentions, of going back through the previous year’s sessions and putting together a wonderful collage of all the beautiful mums I’ve photographed.  I started to.  But then I got sidetracked and started looking back through our own personal photos.  At the images of me with our children. Admittedly there aren’t that many, as I’m usually on the other side of the camera. Therefore what we do have are just snapshots. But they made me smile, and get a bit teary, and marvel at how much they’ve changed. How much we’ve all changed.
And then I wondered what I did before they were with us.
I wasn’t one of those mothers that felt an immediate connection with our children when they were born – I didn’t experience the feeling that nothing had existed before that moment, as I’d learn to expect from everything I’d seen on TV.  I mean, it all had to be the truth, right. I loved them, with my whole being, from the moment I saw them, but not much else seemed to change. Apart from the fact that I’d never be allowed to sleep in again, or read a book in peace. But as I was looking back over these images I realised, though not for the first time, how much I had been waiting for them, how many empty spaces in my life were longing to be filled with them.  And I could never have known that, not even as I held these tiny versions of us for the very first time.  I could never begin to explain the love I feel for them, the ridiculous sense of pride I have in them, the longing I have for them when I’m away for more than a few hours.  It amazes me still. Each and every day.
So I thought to myself that I should put some photos of me and my babies out there.  More for me than for anyone reading this, because they remind me of how much I love being a mother.  They remind me of how much I need my children.  Of how easily I could go right now and just sit with them, breathing them in, feeling like I was as happy as I’d ever be. 

Happy Mothers Day to all you wonderful, beautiful women out there, who give so much of yourselves to and for your children.  Be blessed for the incredible job you do.

Narrelle x