2024 was the year of less. It was a step back from the life path we were continuing down, and it has been a breath of fresh air.

This was the year I finished my work as a digital photographer. Having that closure, and moving on to a form of photography that feels more aligned, is one of my favorite decisions of the year. The weddings I had the honor of capturing were next level beautiful. This year, I took some of my favorite images – both digital and film.

I have felt so supported and confident in making this seemingly radical change in my business. Thank you to every one of you who has followed me during this transition, either with words of encouragement or booked photo sessions. Thank you to those who don’t understand film photography, but who trust the results because it is still me behind the camera. Thank you to myself for finally realizing I don’t have to be everybody’s cup of tea, nor do I want to be.

2024 was not a walk in the park to say the least. It was more like a long, winding road that stretched on for miles – literally and figuratively. 2024 encapsulated three main themes for me: truth, home, and faith. If you are brave enough to see your truth with clarity, if you experience a deep longing for home, can you take a leap of faith to go after it?

While I felt 2023 was the year of presence, being where I was while I was there. 2024 expanded that idea – could I be present amongst family loss, moving out of my own home, and the endless pursuit for the next life step? Could I stay present for all of those moments and feel them fully and entirely? Lean in to the discomfort, say yes to uncertainty, and openly cry tears of confusion and heartbreak?

My answer for the most part, is yes. To catch you up from when we last spoke…

The end of 2023 led to some revelations in the life I was building for myself. We had just finished another busy summer of weddings. We were living in the neighborhood I spent my entire childhood growing up in, and we were settled into our routine. The thing is, I had always had bigger goals for myself. Not that running a wedding photography business well isn’t a big goal, but it wasn’t the kind of life I truly envisioned for myself. My business was not a foundation I wanted to build a life around.

My biggest life goal is, and always has been, to have a place I call home that I love. Being a true homebody, my home is the clearest reflection of me, my safe space, and the place I feel most myself. I wanted my external environment to be as peaceful and calm as my internal world felt. I had done the work to clear out the clutter that kept my brain flighty and my body busy. Now, I needed to see this change in my surroundings.

If you don’t already know, we built our dream home from the time we got married in 2020, until spring of 2021. We got to pick everything exactly how we wanted, and we were blessed with amazing people who helped us make it a reality.

The truth became evident at the end of 2023 – my house was beautiful, but it was not my home. My dream house was meant to be worn in – used and abused. And here I was, scared to drop a fork on our nicely finished wood floors. Take off your shoes at the door. This wasn’t home, this was a place I was trying to preserve perfection once again. It was too nice, too new, to feel like I belonged there.

My dream home wasn’t staring out my window at power lines that criss-crossed over my nearly perfect view of redwood trees. My dream home wasn’t listening to frogs being quieted by cars driving past late at night. And my dream home wasn’t in Freshwater, even if I really thought it was. 

Freshwater has always been home to me, and the only thing worse than watching a place never change is watching a place change in the wrong ways. I now feel I also contributed to making Freshwater a little less like home. I cut down trees and I planted new ones. The creeks I used to play in as a child became less accessible. New houses stand out like sore thumbs amongst the historic cottages that line the neighborhood. The children in the neighborhood grew up, myself being one of them. The trails I loved exploring became more privatized, and No Trespassing signs became the norm. I felt like my little town was changing all too quickly, and not for the better.. not for me at least.

The hardest part of watching a place you love change, is noticing you are being left in the past. I was stuck in a pattern of watching the world around me change, and I was just along for the ride. I saw how this pattern was also reflected in my business – I saw life move forward in all directions, all around me, but I was standing still.

The end of 2023 allowed me to see the possibility it could be different. I set my sights on moving to my dream property in Tennessee. Removing myself from the community that I had built and the obligation of staying consistent felt freeing. I thought it would be easier to move across the country than to change how people saw me. I left 2023 with certainty we would move to a small town outside Nashville, Tennessee. We would have a small homestead with a white cottage, and we would swim in the summers and hibernate in the winters. I was certain we would call Tennessee home by the end of 2024, but it became clear the universe doesn’t always have the same plans that we do. This was the biggest exercise in having faith that the journey is exactly how it is intended to be, however it may unfold.

The themes that ruled my life over the past twelve months were not career related at all. My lessons learned were not at all focused on how I could be a better business owner, a better artist or even a better human. My life focus was on the pursuit of home. Where it would be, what it would look like, what it would feel like to be there, and where we would end up. You see, home for me is more than just a place to live. Home is a deep sense of belonging. Home, for me, is the precursor for starting a family. The soil has to feel just right for me to plant roots. 

When we felt that the country dream was idyllic but unrealistic, we pivoted. We spent hours, days, months, seasons, searching the corners of Zillow for the dream home. We drove thousands of miles along the East Coast, from coastal Maine to the middle of Virginia. We saw possibilities – maybe we could live in small town Vermont and spend the fall amongst changing colors. We could be Maine snowbirds and travel when the winter was too harsh. We could move to Virginia and own an old farmhouse with a pasture and a field of flowers. We could move to Arizona and soak up as much sunshine as the red rocks. We could spend our life in the tall trees of southern Humboldt, or maybe even the mountains of New Mexico. 

We considered all possibilities, we envisioned the realities, and what we found is very cliché. After eight months, on an endless pursuit for home, I discovered it was not four walls we were so desperately searching for. We were looking for a setting to continue our life story. A place that had endless possibilities. And that place, for us, turned out to be Portland, Oregon – our home away from home.

We settled into our new (old) home in October, in the hills of Portland. But more than that, I realized home in actuality doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. Finding home was another manifestation of me seeking perfection in my life. From myself, to my business, and now to my place of existence. I just projected my desire for perfection onto a different part of my life. Perfection is a sneaky motherf***er that way. You think you have outrun it, evaded it, and even resolved it. But really, I had just closed the chapter and opened a new one in the same book. 

At the end of this year, I have concluded that home isn’t four walls. It isn’t even really a physical place. Home for me, feels like all the people spread across the world that I love. Like roots of a tree, they all make up my sense of belonging. I am the tree, and all of my favorite humans ground me with a solid root system.

Some of my roots extend to the snowy mountains of Colorado, some roots have stretched all the way to hot and humid Texas, some just across the river in Portland, some to a quaint mountain town near Lake Tahoe amongst ponderosa pine trees, one new root was planted lakeside in rural Tennessee, some to the city of angels, some to New York State, one particular root extends deep into the earth under an old oak tree in Bakersfield, many stay planted in the redwood forests of Humboldt County, and permanent roots have been set underneath a perfect cobblestone town in the Swiss alps. People, and memories of people, in those places allow me to build a sense of belonging in all corners of the world. If I have enough roots, I don’t actually need home to be a physical place to feel at peace here. 

My heart is made up of fractals. I am composed of all the glimmering pieces of people who have shined their light on me throughout my life. I have found peace in that. Home isn’t a place outside of myself, but rather there is no place I can go that isn’t home. 

The biggest root of my tree is, of course, the love of my life. The person I can spend weeks on the road with and not feel homesick. The person who turns my carbon dioxide into oxygen again and again. My home is full when I am around him and our sweet dog. I feel deep peace and stability because I know these specific roots will stay with me wherever my truth and conviction takes me.

In essence, I am proud of myself at the closing of this year. 2024 was my year of truth, and I pursued my truth until I found my own answers. I found my home, and it turned out to be with me all along. And lastly, I had faith in my dream, to get up each day and persevere through uncertainty. At times, I put my own needs aside to make sure other people felt loved and supported. And I would gladly do it all over again, especially knowing the kind of peace that was on the horizon, waiting for us from the start.

If you find yourself looking for truth in your own life, I applaud you. It is not easy to wake up one day and wish your life felt different. The value you add to this world is not by doing what has already been done, but from following your own personal truth, following your heart, with all of the lessons that come with it. 

Find the roots that make you feel at home in the world, even if they are spread thousands of miles apart. 

I’ve learned I must be a pretty big tree if my roots are as wide as the earth.

Floral arrangements & bouquets created by Kismet Floral Design

Venues photographed: Eagle House Inn, The Ruins at the Astor, and NW Portland home.