This past year has been an interesting one. In the last eight months, our family has had a major career change, moved across the country, added a new little person into our lives, bought a new home, and moved again. I think I read somewhere that any of these things would count as one of life’s major stressors, and here we are, compacting five into just a few short months.
My husband left a job that was increasingly becoming a poor fit for our family, accepting a position with a terrific company (yay, Trader Joe’s!) that would be closer to our families. This perfect new job, however, came with a 30% pay cut from what he had been earning…turns out it has been totally worth it, though. We tightened our belts, realigned our budget, and once again focused on simplicity and necessities. Ironically, it was during this time that we decided to buy a new house. Within the first two weeks of purchasing our new house, we had to replace a garage door, a portion of a fence that blew down, and now we are hoping to add some gutters to the perimeter…not quite what we had envisioned in the first month of being homeowners.
I am not going to lie–being home with three kids amidst all of these changes has been challenging. Sweet little Finley was our surprise baby, and he came at a time when I was at an all time high feeling motivated about my two budding businesses. For the first time since I had left the Navy, I was envisioning myself going back to work full-time, and I was feeling so inspired to finally get these fledgling little dreams off the ground and running. Finding out we were pregnant with him knocked the wind out of me.
Please don’t get me wrong: we had kept the possibility of having three kids in the back of our minds, but with two little children three and under, it was a far-off dream. And looking forward to all of the challenges we knew we would be facing in the course of the coming year, we knew one thing: getting pregnant right then would be the stupidest thing we could possibly do. And so, naturally, we discovered we were pregnant.
Despite it all, Finley has really been a dream baby. I’ve heard somewhere that you feel it deep down when your family is complete, and Finley has filled the missing piece of our puzzle. I love our little family, but despite it all, I have felt like I have not been living up to these impossible standards I have set for myself. When I moved down here, I hoped to have my business as a Collin County family photographer up and running nearly immediately. I wanted to start off slow, maybe with just a session a week, and fill those empty gaps with adding items to my little sewing shop. I wanted to consolidate my businesses and get a new website launched that embodied them both. I wanted to get social media and SEO and all of the other things entailed with getting discovered in a new area up and running. And, well….life has happened. Beautiful, messy, crazy life…life that looks nothing like what I had envisioned.
I know I am rambling, and I thank you for bearing with me. I guess the point of what I am trying to say is this: I have decided to be kind to myself. I have spent so many months berating myself for not having the successful business that holds up to multiple moves, for not getting established immediately, for not buckling down and making things work. Perhaps those with successful businesses would look at what I have done and think ‘failure.’ To rub it in even further, I got more requests for sessions in Chicago in the month after I left than I had gotten in the six months prior. My little business had finally started to take root after three years, and we had just left.
Let me be clear: I am not giving up on my businesses. I still will truck away as I am able. I will still work slowly at getting my new website up and running, I will still steal away for 15 minutes here and there to sit at my sewing machine, I will still hone my skills, and I will still accept photography sessions and special orders from my shop as they come along. But I am allowing my mindset to change. Perhaps instead of seeing myself as a failure, I will recognize that our family has gone through incredible changes, and I have taken them all in stride as they have come. I will allow those changes to take root in our lives as they should. Instead of being embarrassed at how few of new sessions I have to post, I will refocus on what it is that gives me inspiration in my photography. I will try to find those beautiful moments as they come into my life and share these moments instead. I will accept that life with three kids is different than life with two kids. In the time it has taken to write this post, I have had to stop to kiss an owie, to fill a water table, to help get shoes on little feet, to feed a hungry baby. Things will go slower, but as with most things in life, often it is the slow things that turn out truly beautiful.
Last night, I pulled out an old hard drive to look for a particular image, and I came across this photograph from two years ago. It is so hard to believe that my little girls ever looked this way, they have grown so much. This photograph warmed my heart and reminded me why I loved photography in the first place. If you don’t mind being patient with me in the course of…well…however long it takes, I will do my best to share beauty with you. It may not come in the form of new sessions all the time–it may be pictures of my family or of flowers, but hopefully it will be little glimpses of my life behind the lens.
Thank you so much for your constant support to my family and business over the past few years. You are one of the many who have helped make this life beautiful.
Christina Freeman Photography is a Collin County family photographer that specializes in photographing children and families in DFW and surrounding areas including Anna,TX, Melissa, TX, McKinney, Plano, Princeton, Farmersville, Prosper, Frisco, Wylie, Little Elm and other Dallas suburbs. Please contact her to start planning a session today.