Me: “So hey, can we order greeting cards with my photos from our cherry blossom shoot?”
Doug: Sure. When do you need them by?
Me: Ten days.
Silence
Doug: “We can do that.”
And that’s how we started our business.
I wanted to gift my cast mates of “Listen To Your Mother” with something from my heart. Those precious women became sisters and confidantes in a matter of hours. They gave me the gift of listening to my story, they gave me the gift of their tears, they gave me the gift of their stories.
I could dare greatly with these women. They held my story in their gentle hands, I knew that I could put my dream in their hands also. So I blew the dust off a thirty year old dream and went to the person whom I knew could make it happen. In ten days.
Me: “I want them on the highest quality photo paper. In my mind the pictures walk right off the paper.”
Doug: “We can do that.”
Me: “I want to have four different shots.
Doug: “How many shots are you narrowed down to?”
Me: “About forty.”
Doug: “You have some work to do.”
And work we did. And twenty-four hours before the show the cards arrived. It was not unlike giving birth. An idea conceived, it grew, and ready or not, there it was on our dining room table. They were beautiful. Blues and pinks, bursting with life and color. And hope. Not by intention, but it is very hard to look at cherry blossoms and not be swayed by their grace and promise.
A garden of ideas started to grow, I could feel the possibilities take root.
Child loss takes parents and family and consumes them. And parts of us die. And we sit in the ashes for as long as it takes to want to live again.
Scared of failure? Every minute. More scared of not trying. What was a small fire has become an inferno, hot and intense. Fire takes what it touches and makes something new. Child loss takes parents and family and consumes them. And parts of us die. And we sit in the ashes for as long as it takes to want to live again. And then the love for your child gone and the child surviving starts to breath again and burns bright. You dip a torch in that blaze and you travel unfamiliar paths that are dark except for the fire of that love. And you fight to live, even when you want to die. And if you are lucky, some soul will ask you if you have been under a rock during your years of early bereavement and a phoenix rises in you, strong and wicked fierce. Unquenchable. Unstoppable.
And you fight to live, even when you want to die.
I hear the whisper of my Justin today, his response when told something could not be done, “watch me” he would say, “watch me.”
I whisper back to him, “we can do that.”
