Journey to Motherhood

My entire life I have been aware that I won’t be a mother. I never had any interest, plus when someone tells you are so small your legs would break off if you got pregnant as a hypochondriac teenager, you never forget it.

But entering into my thirties, I have become amazed by the women around me—my sister and my friends—who are becoming mothers. I have celebrated their joys, walked with them through losses, and most importantly embraced being the best aunty I can be.

Many document their journeys into motherhood with professional photos, but up here where I live—you do not have access to services like that the same way others do. I was approached by my dear friend to take her maternity photos. With very nervous excitement, I said yes.

I had ever done anything like this before, I looked things up, got the camera ready—and was generally freaking out the day off.

“But to create a day all about my friend—picking our clothes, driving around back of town, following her out onto the tundra that she is a part of and getting to capture her in the arctic sunlight she was born to—was such an honor, yes, but also a joy. I got to see Kotzebue’s little corners through her eyes, see the fall time enhanced with her maternity glow. I came home feeling I had seen Kotzebue in a new light—the light of a mother eagerly awaiting her son.”

The day felt like getting to capture my friend as she is, not as the instagram focused lens of our generations expects, but her—walking in her XtraTuffs through mud, eating berries, and laughing.

I don’t want to make this documentation about MY art, when really its all for her, to remember how her body did this amazing thing and grew a whole boy and she still hiked up hills, picked berries, took care of her plants and chickens, and generally never stopped being herself. That’s a myth of motherhood I have SO LOVED seeing shattered among the friends I know who have become and are becoming mothers—the myth I see shattered in the incredible women of Kotzebue—you never stop being yourself. Becoming a mother is about you embracing who you are, just as my choice not to embraces me. And the community, near and far, that exists to love on these children born of incredible mothers, that’s what I’m here for.

So with humbleness, here I share a few photos from this fun journey of me getting to learn more about my friend and motherhood, and being an aunty in a village, through the lens of a camera. Welcome to the world, little one. We’re glad you have arrived.