Maybe it starts with a tree

Last week I wrote about the room that went quiet — the grief, the isolation, the years it took just to get my head above water. I'm not going to retell that story here. But I want to tell you what happened a few nights ago, because something shifted.

A friend of mine — also a photographer, also someone who had to set down her camera when life got too heavy — posted something late at night. She'd been looking at old client photos. The creative sets, the in-between moments, the art they'd made together. She wrote about missing it. About how she'd thought she might never pick her camera up again, and how that loss doesn't feel quite so permanent tonight.

I read it and felt it in my chest. I commented that I could relate — that I was craving creation but wasn't sure I had the confidence anymore. And she wrote back something I keep returning to:

"Don't look at full time out the gate. Start small. You have to lift that camera up and document the world around you, what you see that you love. Maybe it's a tree. Get that camera in your hand again."

Maybe it's a tree. I keep thinking about that.

When I stopped doing photography, part of me thought there'd be relief. And there was, briefly — but underneath it was something I didn't expect. I had been a bit of a workaholic in the best way, the kind where you spend three times longer on a client's images than you technically needed to because you wanted it to be right. I was chasing something that felt meaningful. And then the pandemic happened, and people I thought I knew showed me who they really were, and I started to lose people — to grief, to distance, to their own choices about who they wanted to be. I insulated. I got quiet. Some of that was grief. Some of it was me.

Some of those friendships I can't blame on grief or the pandemic. I got scared of the world around me — scared of getting it wrong, scared of not being able to keep everyone safe — and I pulled back. I let distance do what I was too afraid to address directly. I stopped being included, slowly, quietly. And that hurt in a way that's still hard to sit with.

I lost touch with the creative part of myself too — not just photography, but the making of things. The reaching for beauty in ordinary moments. I'm still finding my way back to her.

There's a practical reality too. My husband and I are focused right now on getting out from under some debt, building something more solid for our future. So when I think about picking up a camera again, there's a voice that asks: but what's the plan? What's the income stream? And that voice is trying to help, I know it is. But it's also the voice that turns "maybe a tree" into an overwhelming business plan before I've even touched the lens.

My friend reminded me: full time is too big an elephant to chew. Part time is still a big bite. But a tree? A tree is just a tree.

I don't know if photography comes back as a business. I don't know if it's part time, or occasional, or just for me. What I'm starting to understand is that I need variety — I need to make things. Not just write, not just plan, not just think. I crochet, I photograph, I create. That part of me isn't gone. It's just been very, very quiet.

I'm not ready to say "I'm back." But I'm also not saying never anymore. And for tonight, I'm letting that be enough.

Maybe I'll start with a tree.

(Side note: my website still says I'm a photographer. I haven't updated it yet. I'm not sure that's an accident.)

Warm at the table. Fierce in the fight.
— Susie