40/52

PORTRAIT FROM THE WEEK OF OCTOBER 5, 2014

As I pondered what was keeping me from partaking in this endeavor of posting portraits of my child every week I realized that it was my fear or shame of not having maintained my goal perfectly, or even slightly close to resembling perfect. I’ve failed to post photographs far more weeks of the year than I posted successfully. But that’s when I realized my intention was far different than to post perfection. My hope was solely to document my little child’s fleeting childhood by capturing tangible moments of their day-to-day, and therefore document their growth and expansion. And in these photographs, “imbued in each image is my story too; a tale of motherhood with all its exhaustion, frustration, joy and palpable, immeasurable love. It’s a documentation of ordinary days that I wanted to remember because they were beautiful - an odd collection of singular moments that would have otherwise gone unnoticed amidst the general busyness of life. Even when the days were too long to enjoy I can see, in retrospect, that they were a blessing.” My goal was never perfection. My goal was never to seem “on top of my to-do list”. It instead was and still is to stop, to observe, to document, and to cherish my child. 

So I begin again, and in doing so, I am going to appropriately do so by playing “catch up”. 

"A portrait of my son, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Micah: announcing that there is going to be a new addition to the Pope family come April 2015.

Photograph taken by my sister, Ariel Axsom, of Ariel Renee Photography.