As many of you know, October 10, 2011 marked a turning point for Ryan and me. At around 4 am a spark from a socket on our back porch lit the deck ablaze and quickly spread through our home. Ryan and I were lucky enough to escape with our lives, our dog, our phones and the clothes on our backs. In a matter of moments, even with the excellent work performed by our fire department, everything we owned was gone.

To this day, I’m amazed with how well I coped with this event. I’m not a fan of change and this was a HUGE change. Everything sentimental I owned had melted or turned to ash. My blue bird of happiness in my bridal bouquet from my mother’s bouquet was gone without a trace. My favorite stuffed dog who’d been through three broken arms and the lose of both my grandfathers with me had no remains to speak of. My love letters from Ryan were a melted mess of paper and plastic. Old photographs, and trinkets, and jewelry and clothes, it all was gone. With everything that needed to be done, paperwork for insurance, items that needed replaced and business needed to carry on as usual – I never really had the time to grieve my lose or reflect on where we were. We simply took it one day at a time and accomplished what we could each day.

But now that it’s the slow season – I’ve slowly begun to piece together some of the pieces of this critical moment in our past. Ryan and I had the clarity of mind to take some pictures during the whole process: photographs to document what had been lost, the demolition of our first home together, and the rebuilding of our new home. Since attending FotoChaos in October last year (actually on the one year anniversary of our fire) and listening to Dawn Shields talk about some of her personal projects, I have felt a great calling to do this myself. To further document and collect images depicting the fire and pull them together into one cohesive book. It’s proving to be a much more tedious and time consuming project than I’d anticipated, but through the project I’m finding great comfort and piece. I’m allowing myself to reflect and experience emotions that I simply did not have time to feel at the time and it’s quite a relief to let them come as they will.

The album still has a long way to go, but I’m excited about the progress so far and where it may lead. I doodled out an initial concept of what the book might look like but it is morphing and changing as I go along and becoming it’s own thing all together. Here’s just a little glimpse at a couple pages so far. 🙂

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed this little peek into my personal project. As you can see, it’s completely different from my typical bright and luminous and simple style. I’m sure these images will change a lot as the book unfolds for me, but I’m excited about the current progress. I hope you’re all having a fantastic day! See you soon!

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