The Creative Counsellor & the last year | Chilliwack Photographer

Things have been so quiet over in this corner of the internet - I’ve still been photographing things here and there but also really treasuring a rest and refresh around my art practice and how I express myself with images. It’s been so needed - the last few years have been challenging for many reasons and the way that 2024 has unfolded has been SO healing and so different in much needed ways. In February, Jamie and I moved to the sweetest little converted barn house downtown with our cats - it has a lovely deck space where I can lay out and read books, the happiest hydrangea, and a front porch I can’t wait to fill with pumpkins in the fall.

I also am now a registered clinical counsellor with a private practice called The Creative Counsellor - focusing around neurodivergence/ADHD in adults/women (including late diagnoses), creatives navigating their practice, self worth and self esteem, as well as grief therapy. You can follow me on Instagram here! I offer virtual counselling across B.C. and in person sessions right now at a cozy rented space at Thrive Collective on Sundays, as well as select weekdays downtown.

In July my best friend came to visit - we laid around in fields, wandered downtown, watched movies we loved as kids (looking at you He-Man Masters of the Universe) and really just hung out. Last time she came through we did SO MUCH (two day trips - we did Kelowna and back and Victoria and back, both in one day and I have no idea who that version of me was and where she got the energy). This visit was a lot more low key, I think we both really just needed some time together singing songs driving down Camp River Rd and late night chats in my backyard under the moon. I will always be so grateful for friends that are soul sisters - and so grateful for getting to see so much of my family this year, too.

We also had a beautiful internment for my dad, placing his ashes in one of his favourite spots to go walking. We all gathered together, singing I’ll Fly Away out into the morning while birds flew overhead.

It’s been a beautifully slow summer - and in that, I’ve taken a break since June from my photography business and really spent some time exploring my art practice. I’ve still been shooting and creating - my editing is taking forever - but I’ve found breath in the rest and my heart is full of so many new ideas. I have loved photographing all of you for the last 10 years and while I’m not sure how long this break will be, you’ll continue to see what I’m creating here and on my Instagram.

I hope these last months have been kind to you all, too. More to come.

Taken by my pal Jen Ault

Brittany had the idea of making wine for my dad and I designed these labels from a little photo shoot we had a few years ago at Island 22. Such a happy memory for me. We had the internment in the morning, followed by a very small family gathering celebrating his life.

These beautiful roses grow wild across the street.

Wanders in northwestern Ontario... | Chilliwack Photographer

Friends, I left the province for the first time in 6 years a couple weeks ago and it was so needed. There’s something about dipping your feet in Lake Superior, seeing fireflies under midnight skies, and sticking buttercups under your chin that just makes you feel like coming home to yourself.

I did so much - I’d forgotten the glow of country stars, how these little copper moths line the gravel roadways of Murillo and Conmee and spring up around you with every step, how Robin’s Donuts makes chocolate and coconut Robin’s eggs and they’re delicious.

And out in the family orchard, we spread some of my dad’s ashes under a red atlas apple tree. He would have loved that so much.

I took his luggage along with me, too, with a luggage tag proudly saying he’d visited Hawaii and his name and address spelled out in block capitals. I miss his writing. I miss his words and wisdom. Grief is something you always carry - even if it gets less heavier, sometimes, over time. I felt my dad with me every step of the way - but that’s like here, too. I don’t think those we love are ever far.

It was such a healing trip, and there is so much I’m healing and have been for so long. The last 5 years have passed like a blur and they’ve carried so much heaviness, so much loss, both for my family and for Jamie’s. We’ve lost 4 family members in 2 years, cancer, the pandemic, health. I felt something heal in me when I put my feet into the lake, when I travelled the old pathways me and my best friend Melissa struck out on 20 years ago. When I lay on the rocks and the gravel and felt so supported by the earth. What a beautiful thing to experience nature in these ways. I am so grateful I was able to do this.

The rest of the summer is stretching out before me and I have so many plans - mostly on healing & new projects. Sometimes that intersects. Often it does, because photographing & sharing things in these spaces is therapeutic for me, too.

I’m still taking submissions for Sourcing Joy and Grief Houses, you are so welcome to participate and there’s no fee to do it - these will be photo essays as a heart project of mine.

The pathway I’ve walked on for 20+ years, Lowkey taking a cozy snooze, feeding chickens, a butterfly with a broken wing, “Pride Lives Here” on my cousin’s house, a field of purple clover

The spot where we laid my dad’s ashes, and my cousin Melissa wandering her garden during golden hour, and Lilia and Lowkey in the field at midnight under a full moon

The Murphy House, my old dream house, as seen from the laneway, a copper moth resting on a wild daisy, my cousin planting marigolds at our grandparents’ grave, my goddaughter holding a small bouquet of wildflowers, making prints in the sun with Frankie and yard blossoms.

GRIEF HOUSES | Narrative Photography Project

A photo of a house photo found in a thrift store

I’ve written and created a lot around grief - I always have. Sometimes I feel my gifts are grief: I carry the stories of my family, of the people who have passed, and I create vigils of art around their memories.

My first significant experience with loss was when I was 11 and my mom’s best friend passed away. She had been my babysitter growing up, I spent many, many days at her house, bugging her cat, having stand offs with her around finishing all the food on my plate (even when it was tuna with onions in it), and so many sun-filled days at the beach with her when our families would vacation together. I feel so lucky that decades later I can still remember her so clearly, so well - clear enough to hear her voice. I am almost the age now that she was when she passed. It’s a long time for the world to be without her. I wrote her a poem when I was 11, my tears staining the face of the doll she’d sewn me years ago - art was the way that I processed the enormity of something so big and so impossible. That pull to create art has been a gift.

Since then, I have experienced a significant amount of loss, and every single one is so different. Every one is sacredly held in the halls of my memory. Grief, like healing, is not linear. It ebbs and flows like rivers that flood and recede through the seasons. In my experience, in time, it gets easier: but the space that person left behind will always remain.

This project, “GRIEF HOUSES” is about that space. It’s about creating a portrait of the person who has passed by what they left behind. It aligns quite a bit to ideas I first explored in my thesis, an autoethnography about personal objects left behind and different losses: losses through death, and losses through dementia. It’s also a project that’s moving at it’s own pace: I imagine I’ll be creating and working with this theme over the next year and I’m being flexible both to the stories submitted and honouring my own energy as I unfold it.

If you’d like to participate in this project, I would so love to hear from you. You can submit through the Grief Houses submission form found here. I am especially looking for houses/spaces before they are packed up and sorted through, and while I would love to document a whole house, I’m also open to apartments, rooms (even in hospice), etc. All participants will need to sign a release to be a part of the project. If you’re unsure, please reach out anyways and we can see what’s possible.

If you want to support community projects like this, you can join my Patreon. Funds raised through Patreon go into projects like this and allow me to continue creating and keep participation barriers as flexible and open as possible.

One of my favourite photos: my grandparent’s sunlit living room after my Nan died, Aunt Dorothy sitting in Nan’s chair and my grandpa gently letting us all know we could leave anytime.

It’s a photo that’s full of grief, shifting rituals, a portrait of someone made up of their absence and what they’ve left behind.

I’ve been (slowly, so slowly) developing a project around houses & grief, and I’ve thought of this photo a lot as I do.

Unfolding Grief | Saying goodbye to my wonderful Dad.

Tullstarr, 2020.

Hey friends, it’s been a minute.

I hope you’re all doing ok - I hope you’re navigating this challenging time with self-compassion and kindness. Things are draining, and I feel like as fall unfolds into winter, we’re all feeling a bit like a threadbare sweater. When I feel completely exhausted I take whatever time I can to do something I love - maybe that’s creating art, maybe it’s listening to some rain sounds in the dark, or sitting by the river watching the water flow, visiting the forest, or just having a quiet, slow breakfast next to my open window while all the birds hop around the garden. I do a lot of things at a much slower pace these days, and maybe there’s some grace in the process of just rolling with it, staying warm, finding things I never felt I had time or headspace for.

I’ve had a hard time knowing how to place this into words, and almost three months in I felt it was time to talk just a bit about what’s been happening for me this last while. In August, my dad became very sick and was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer. During this time my parents had been preparing to move into a new home, and so as we navigated the enormity - the impossibility - of all this news, packing, painting, organizing, selling the house, all continued. We couldn’t have done any of it without a community that came around us to help. It all blurs, between this surreal loss, this significant change, all in the middle of a pandemic. I know that so many of you know what it is to feel your heart break and keep going anyways - I felt as though my heart broke a thousand times from August to September, and yet here I still am.

In mid-September, my dad passed away in hospice. Hospice during Covid was a very strange experience. All the common areas were closed with the furniture stacked, and we had to wear gowns, masks, and goggles to go visit with him. Visitors were limited to 1-2 a day, until the end, when we could all be with him. The staff were absolutely wonderful, and their empathy & compassion working during an incredibly challenging and exhausting time was so helpful. My dad spent his last days working on his memoirs, visiting with friends when he could, and had a wonderful Saturday the week he died - where he felt like his old self, had eggs benedict for breakfast, and managed to get a number of pages in his memoirs completed.

My dad lived a beautiful, empathetic & rich life. Looking back through all the photos - and there are so many - I feel grateful to have such a record of his humour, kindness, and spirit.

Since he’s died, my mom has moved into her beautiful apartment with their cat Jasper. I sit by the river sometimes and remember him, wearing his bright blue hoodie. We held his funeral just over a month ago - and my dad planned a part of it. He would have been so honoured by it - and thankful, as my family and I are, for everyone who worked so hard to plan it & make it accessible to everyone who wanted to attend, even at a distance. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to look at the memoirs, but they’ll be there when I’m ready to edit & arrange them for him like he wished me to. My family and I talk on FaceTime as often as we can - I haven’t hugged my mom since cases started going up, but I’m really hopeful that we can all be together at Christmas in our little bubble.

At Halloween, Audra and I went up to Tullstarr for the weekend. It was so so so needed. I made a little memory altar to my dad, with shells filled with red chilli flakes & lavender, soul cakes and a little cup of coffee, with one of his pens & his jacket. As I sat outside, a hawk - which was a significant animal for my dad - swooped down, flapped his wings, and soared into the field. I know my dad is OK, I really do - I just also know I will spend the rest of my life missing him.

His dear friend, Brander Raven, an amazing artist, created a hawk drawing that we placed on his urn. Since then I’ve seen so many hawks, more hawks than I think I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if it’s that I notice them more, or that I’m seeing them as tiny, significant messages - a reminder that there is more to the universe than we experience with our own eyes, that those we lose are never truly lost, and that even when we’re feeling at our deepest, darkest, most alone - we never truly are.

As fall gives way to winter, I’m still taking photos, I’m still creating. I’m translating, somehow, all of this heaviness in my chest into something I can look at, and work with, and create with. Some days this works well, other days it doesn’t, but there’s grace in the midst of all of it because even when your heart breaks, slowly, in time, there is a love, creativity, and care seeping in to every shattered space.

I hope that all of you are doing ok, I hope you’re feeling loved, and safe, and giving yourselves space to just unfold in this complex season.

Upper L - R: 1. Our last walk by the river. 2. A beautiful floral arrangement by my friend Britt at Blossom Floral Design. 3. My dad and I at our special family spot. 4. Self Portrait in my parent’s new apartment. 5. “Temporarily Closed Please do not Use” Hospice during Covid.

My dad in his new apartment.

L-R: My dad’s funeral with Brander Raven’s hawk drawing on his urn. 2. Paper hearts outside the hospital window. 3. Hospice closed common rooms. 4. My dad, watching us. 5. My dad’s funeral table, including his Paul Harris Fellowship pin from Rotary and his rainbow stole. 6. Britt at Blossom Floral Design created such a beautiful floral display for my dad. 7. A little altar memorial for my Dad on Samhain. 8. My dad’s bedside table at hospice, looking like a self portrait of him - his pens, ketchup packets, spoon for coffee, phone, glasses, pens for notes. I took this in the morning on the day he died.

We’ll miss him forever.