Lately I’ve drowned in thoughts and anxieties that shout the words: why-is-this-so-fucking-hard & why-aren’t-I-stronger into my own echo chamber and then I remember something I read recently that really resonated: Sleep deprivation is an actual kind of torture. It is. and needlessly, I had surrendered to moments of doubt and darkness about the strength of my family and our resolve and our indestructibility as a unit but especially about mine and my husband’s status as a team. But only because I did not truly respect the intensity of the obstacles we’ve faced. And cleared.
Read MoreTeeny Meeny /
I have to resist sharing every damn day because my phone is FILLED with photos and videos of her.
Read MoreRipley /
Ripley. The newest member and the second baby girl to join the Tillett/O’Shaughnessy clan.
Read MoreMina Rumi's Birth Story [Graphic] /
Mina Rumi Tillett O’Shaughnessy was due October 29th, 2018 but she was born just past 2 in the afternoon on October 10th, very nearly 3 weeks early. This is the story of her early arrival.
Read MoreEternities Exist Between Dawn and Dusk /
his sweet babe is 5 months old today. Time passes so quickly, I’m always left with the tragic relentless feeling that I’m not fully appreciating or as present for every precious moment as I should be. For her, the days are still long enduring intervals in which eternities exist between dawn and dusk. For me, it feels as if every morning I have awoken from a long coma and she seems so much older than the baby I put to sleep the night before. It’s one of the hardest parts of motherhood for me.
Read MoreAddax; Nothing Here Like You /
Lonely in trees, ignoring the sky because you’re angry, because you’re hurt
Asking for home, crying for family, searching for left behind souls in the dirt
Everything to Lose /
I haven’t felt the unease of discontent or is-this-where-I-belong inquisitions I had grown so accustomed to in previous chapters in enough time that I finally took notice. Suddenly the asphalt under my feet became air and I was floating. And then fear tore me from the clouds and returned me to the bitter earth.
Read MoreSix Metal Plates /
Introducing the 6 metal plates that are a permanent fixture of my face now.
Read MoreThey See Enormous Things /
I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me? Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things.
Read More20 Years Ago Today /
Twenty years ago today I awoke to a world without my dad. He’d shot himself in the head in the next room while I slept. There’s something dreamlike about heading to bed one insignificant evening—with a father,— and waking the next morning without one; having someone and then so suddenly losing them.
Read MoreFountain of Blood /
“I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl.” —Björk
Read MoreLittle Chick /
The days are long but the weeks are short and the months turn to dust in the palms of my helpless hands.
This little chick is 7 weeks old today. And I am finally getting accustomed to this chaos.
Geraldine Elaine Tillett /
My grandmother is too great a force to be eulogized.
Instead, I only want to share a fraction of what I’ve learned from her.
The First Pregnancy /
“That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don’t know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it’s just the horizon – and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it’s suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you’ve had the right shots.” —Emily Perkins
Read MoreGerminationem /
If someone had asked me 10 years ago if I would plan to take self-portraits should I ever get pregnant the answer would have likely been a resounding yes. To document such drastic changes in this vessel I inhabit and be able to add that to my body of work, which was then and still occupied by so many beautiful and various female bodies I've photographed over the years? Well, of course. Ten years later when prompted with that question by several someones, my answer wasn't so certain, maybe even doubtful.
Read MoreSaguaro and Buckhorn Cholla /
When I became lost in the separation of child and mother,
Of myself and the other
When I became lost you became found
You climbed on to the backs of birds and
sailed between land and space for miles
Your back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless night
each freckle an understudy for the veiled stars
Balloon Girl (there is always hope) /
I met Melissa, this red-lipped, beautifully inked, raven-haired woman less than 6 months ago. One day, nearly two months ago she confessed her love to me for Banksy’s balloon girl. She said she was dying to recreate it in a photograph for someone special to her, but wanted a snowy-filled backdrop. She wanted that vibrant red heart balloon to pop off a clean white setting.
I loved the idea.
Read MoreColorado's Wonder View Tower /
My husband and I recently participated in an Atlas Obscura event to get a peek inside the Wonder View Tower in Genoa, Colorado. I'd actually never heard of this place before a friend sent me a link for the AO tour event only days prior to the meet-up. Needless to say, I was hooked and immediately bought tickets.
Read MoreSkin of the World /
Do you see it?
The way the land piques beneath us, like your skin, my fingers hovering millimeters above it, anticipating my touch. Touch. The streets are scars and the rivers arteries feeding the body.
Eastern State Penitentiary /
"Looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world."
Read More