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.

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.

On silence, on caretaking, on self care and kindness

I keep sitting down to write about the last few months and somehow the words all seem too big, clumsy and wrong. I don’t have the lines of the story yet, and I don’t have the last chapters resolved, and it seems like this season has really been a journey whose words are still taking shape in the light and dark muddle of things. And I’ll be honest: I’ve been tired. Tired past my bones, tired in my spirit. I’ve been wanting to share a bit of my experience through all of this, and on reflecting on it, I’m not sure I can properly convey all the strength and grace my mom has shown though all of this - how much she’s had to go through - and so as I write this all out, I’m trying not to speak for her, say too much or summarize her experiences as my own.

In the summer, my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. In the fall, she moved in with me to begin treatment, and on Thanksgiving we almost lost her. I am so happy to write that she’s doing better - there’s a journey left ahead, but she’s been able to spend more time back home, we take little walks around my neighbourhood, and her and my dad have even adopted an “emotional support cat” named Jasper.

During all of this, I’ve taken on less sessions and I’ve been so grateful to my clients who’ve been so flexible and understanding with my longer editing turnaround, rescheduling sessions, and slower response times. I stopped booking new sessions around October, but I’m slowly opening up my availability, while also creating + forming big plans for recraft in 2020, as well as doing more therapy work. Lots of new stuff coming next year - but I’m approaching it all slowly, steadily, and with a deeper recognition of the power of my voice in the world and an understanding for self care.

This year I’ve been working on my self care stories, and I had no idea when I began them that self care would be such a meaningful and poignant part of 2019. I knew that self care wasn’t always easy, but it’s hard. For any of you out there for caring for others, anyone feeling heavy about taking needed time to rest when someone you love is hurting, know that caring for yourself is caring for others. Burn out is real. Take time to walk by the river. Take time to sit in your backyard. Take time to have a slow coffee on a long morning and listen to the rain fall out the window, ask for support, find a therapist you resonate with - it’s ok to not be ok, and it’s ok to ask for help.

For those of you navigating the medical system in any way: keep asking questions. Keep making phone calls. Don’t be afraid to push - kindly, gently, directly. We are all in this world doing our best to navigate it, and not many of us know what’s next, or how long a waitlist is, or how long is too long to wait for treatment. Even for me, coming from a (very small) background with Northern Health, there was so much I didn’t know, didn’t understand, felt anxious about. There were days I sat at my table and made 8 hours worth of phone calls. There were times I called my mom’s pharmacist so much they knew the sound of my voice. There have been times when I’ve felt so angry, frustrated, full of grief, anxious - completely lost in a system that often seems to work without human kindness, without the awareness of how wonderful my mom is - How needed she is, how much of a light in the world she is, and how desperately care was needed.

I am happy to say that my mom now has a wonderful team working with her - it took time for things to get moving, but now that they are going forward, I feel incredibly grateful for a thousand small kindnesses: how her ER dr always remembers her, phone calls from her oncologist checking in, incredible CGH paramedics, the team of pharmacists that answer all my anxious questions, the gentle kindness of BCCA nurses and the nursing hotline, how the morning after my mom was placed in ICU her good friend met me at the nursing desk and just wrapped me up with love. There are a thousand more kindnesses I could mention: care packages, prayer shawls, muffin drop offs, soup made with love, check ins, long talks, all of the people who have made space and offered support. My cousin Melissa even came down for just over a week to help out, which was so needed. Jamie has stayed up all night with me, helping to care for my mom after rough chemo rounds. I couldn’t have done any of this without him. My family has been so good at checking in with each other and supporting one another. In all of this, I know we all feel very lucky and very loved.

My mom is spending more time back home now with my dad and her little cat - the stairs at their place are still tough, but I know how good it is to be home and feeling cozy. During chemo rounds she comes back here, but with every round I’ve seen an improvement. The process of cancer is so individual, down to the type of chemo delivered to every patient, to their reactions, to the support network surrounding them - and there’s a lot about cancer that never gets talked about - if you’re looking to support someone going through treatment or caring for someone who is, reach out to them. Don’t be afraid to be present for them. Illness can be so isolating, and sometimes it's hard to know what to say when someone is hurting and you don’t know how to fix it - but there is an amazing gift found in being with people, in sitting next to them in grief, or pain, or hardship, even if it’s on the other end of a phone call.

For now, we’re moving into a slow Christmas, and I can honestly say that’s ok. The world slowed down to a crawl this fall, time seemed to slip, and I’m not sure I remember most of August. But there is a gift in the quiet, a refocusing in time - and I’m content to just sit by the river and let it flow.

*Images and story posted with permission from my mama.