gonna try christina’s just one paragraph challenge and try cranking out at least one a day for 30 days. you know, get some writing out. (i hope.) of course, i’m skeptical so i’m only telling you, dear blog.
i have so many stories i want to tell, but i don’t know who to trust. let’s face it. out here on the interwebs, there are many audiences you just can’t trust with a story. even a good one. especially a good one. especially a good one that’s only good in your head and could be good on paper with some time and love and revision and patience (and maybe after a standing ovation for effort). but i never even get that far. it’s so hard to put it down. to put yourself out there like that. to put your stories out there. the good ones. the ones that really mean something.
i know they say if your story/troubles/truth touch just one person, then it’s a good story. but i’m always holding out to touch 2 or 3. i want more before i’ve even had one. i want awards and accolades before i’ve even put down one word on paper.
oh how i always love this museum because the architecture is just as gratifying as the art spun around its insides. very much enjoyed the Rineke Dijkstra Retrospective exhibit, especially The Krazyhouse video series, her mesmerizing Park Portraits and the New Mothers series (wow!).
oh and here’s my sneaky shot of my favorite Cezanne. swoon. yeah, i took it with my phone from my purse. shhhh.
It’s here! So excited to finally share this beautiful book project from Tracey Clark with you!
In her new book Elevate the Everyday: A Photographic Guide to Picturing Motherhood, Tracey manages to combine her years of photography expertise with amazing and practical tips for capturing the journey of motherhood. The book is not only gorgeous, helpful, and insanely inspiring, but it’s also full of several must-read stories of motherhood — her own and those of many of the mom writers and bloggers you know and love. I am beyond honored to have my own story included in the book.
Take a look!
Beautiful, right?
And yippeee! Here’s my story “Migration”:
Read an excerpt:
Migration
By Sheri Reed
While staring out the front window into a bleak February morning, birds entered my life.
My five-year-old suddenly set down his toys and wholeheartedly gasped “Beautiful!” and I looked up to see a window full of birds. Dozens of robins dropped down like fiery orange comets into the stripped winter trees next door. My boys—my oldest newly five and my youngest a few months past his first birthday—and we ran, window to window, hands and noses pressed to glass to take in the magic. On this day, the migration of many things was made loud and clear. Birds … yes, birds, I thought, grabbing my camera, so unexpectedly inspired. I began to look up for the everyday beauty of their passing show.
A few years after my first son was born, I ran into an old friend, deeply immersed in the early weeks of new motherhood. Mostly she shared the profound goodness: smallness, amazement, and beauty, all which cause a mother’s heart to come undone. In fact, it wasn’t until we were saying goodbye that, heart and eyes overflowing, she stopped me and told me that parenthood was so much harder than she ever imagined.
She looked in my eyes and asked, “Were you scared?”
“Yes,” I answered. “To death.”
What I did not say was that I was still scared. Scared I’d never survive toddlerhood, scared I could never be enough, and maybe more than anything, scared I would never be able to fill the growing void that feeling like “just a mother” left inside me.
Once the robins cracked something open in me, I began to take the boys “drive-by nature gazing trips” along the driving route of a nearby wildlife preserve. A few visits quickly became several trips a week and frantic dashes to catch the “golden hour” before sunset. Those days out there, chasing bird glimpses along the dusty roads, saved me — from boredom, from loneliness, from feeling stuck, from the debilitating heaviness of creative stagnation, and ultimately from forgetting who I was. Boys tucked in carseats, the natural world passing us by, I began to feel like myself, most certainly a new self, but my own true self nonetheless.
my mom and i just drove the I-5 to and from L.A. i was lucky to have the opportunity to cover the red carpet premiere of the hunger gamesmovie for work, and it was so … much … frickin’ … fun!!! seriously, i had such a good time, and it was strangely not surreal or terrifying at all. in fact, it felt amazing to be so brave and do something like this off the cuff.
you can see video clips from my interviews with the cast here, here, here, and here, and a few photos here.
excited to start the new year — although the older i get, the less it feels like i need a fresh start each new year. i think that’s a good thing, and i’m trying really hard not to feel like it’s an old thing. signed up for a photography class (i’m long overdue on learning what aperture is…) and feeling a year’s worth of rad about that.
today is pretty 