Blindsided Me / August 4, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"I feel like I'm actually sharing my life with someone in ways I never have before. It's alien and engrossing and amazing and unbelievable. It's strange. It's wonderful. It's totally blindsided me."

Before You Know It Something’s Over / July 22, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"My father died on November 14th, 1995, when I was 14. Every day since the day he died I am one day farther away from him than I was before. This is the truest thing about me. It is the most important and worst thing to ever happen to me. It is me. My father died when I was 14. I will tell people this forever. It is the truest thing about me. I was 14 when he died. My father. I was 14. I am what I have lost." —Marie Lyn Bernard

The Mountains Are Calling / July 6, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"The mountains are calling and I must go." ―John Muir

Without Constant Comparisons / May 26, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"Since voicing all of these things, saying them out loud to a friend, I feel like I'm seeing him and my life with him through clearer glasses. Or at least I'm trying to approach this life without constant comparisons to my last one."

A Chance I'm At Peace with Taking / May 4, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"I have to see this through. I'm following my heart on this and it may blow up in my face in the end but it's a chance I'm at peace with taking."

Intricacies and Nuances / May 3, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"I fear there will be so many little intricacies and nuances of my life that are forever lost to a forgetful past because I haven't made the time to write them down.

Strange / January 30, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"This is so strange, we're so strange...whatever it is that he and I are trying to do here.
ot lose each other, I guess."

Nonsensical Jibberish / January 28, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

We've been talking so much, in fact, I told him I didn't, in fact, feel the aloneness I should really be feeling.

Words and Daughters / December 17, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"15 years ago a man moved into the next step.7 and a quarter centuries earlier, another man traveled on too. Their deeds, their lives, even their words and daughters are beautiful echoes. "The future is ours - it's ours to choose." - Clay Tillett "What you seek is seeking you." - Jalal ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi... better known as Rumi. This can be a hard day, but I think you know happiness today. The fact that you can feel it today, means you can feel it any day. I'm grateful to be a part of it. I would tell your dad that you are an incredible friend. I'd tell him you are a great human being. That you've grown into an amazing woman. I'd tell him how in love with you I am, and pray I've done good by you, and continue to. I'd hope he found me worthy. I love you, Becky. I'll never stop." —M. O'Shaughnessy

Notions / November 4, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"Sometimes the sadness creeps in and I spend time comforting him and hugging and holding him, telling him not to be sad and that everything will be okay. Sometimes my life feels so surreal I feel like I'm floating outside my body watching me moving effortlessly through the motions. I keep drifting back to preconceived notions in my head of what two people who have spent the last 14 years of their lives together who are going through the first steps of separating should look like. And no part of my life resembles or mirrors those notions."

Nothing Good Gets Away / November 4, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

It's startling and even profoundly jarring how suddenly feelings of such fear and crushing defeat can sneak up on me; how small and alone I can feel in this painfully short and so quickly passing lifetime.

Sometimes life is nothing but a blur. Sometimes I think I'm predisposed to my father's eventual hopeless and fundamentally relenting inclination.

(Or worse even, my mother's living fear of being simply alone with herself.)

Today I Now Have Two / October 12, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"It's said that you can not control the depth of a wound another soul inflicts upon you. But you can certainly control the depth of the wound you inflict on someone else. Since the age of 16 I've only had one regret: that I didn't tell my father goodnight and ignored him the night he shot himself. Starting today I now have two.

That I've so deeply hurt the one person I've loved the most in this world."

Brutal and Full of Emotion / October 11, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"But things between us are too hard. Sometimes it's nice and weird and feels like everything's normal. Sometime's it's brutal and full of emotion and doubt, and sadness and 'What's wrong with me's' and 'Why won't you just stay's.'"

Half Yelling, Half Crying / September 26, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"He was distraught. He was filled with rage for the guy. He was worried about me. He said 'I had a bad feeling about you staying with him. I knew you shouldn't have stayed with him! I always knew he was a scumbag! Why didn't you listen to me?? Why did this happen!?' He was half yelling, half crying. I was bawling. I was apologizing. I should have listened. I should have listened. He's always right. He apologized. 'None of this is your fault. None of this is your fault.'"

Break Your Own Heart / September 23, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart." —Cheryl Strayed

For Now, Relentlessly Onward / September 9, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

I'm on a journey to find my purpose. I haven't yet figured out if it's something I carelessly lost along the way somewhere a few miles back, a few years back, a few spins back or if it's something I've never truly had a firm grasp on - purpose has always felt like a moth or a butterfly fluttering by me occasionally. If I'm lucky, every now and then I'll cage it between my hands, marveling at it's elusive beauty but it always escapes, fluttering away to be caged by others inevitably.

Before I Lose You / September 6, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"I would like to make love to you, and again, my tired head on your breasts, and again, my strong arms and shoulders lifting your hips up and rocking them, again, both hands turning you and pulling you and finally crushing down into you, again, my sweat and weight upon you. And again: for sex may get boring, but making love does not get boring, but it does get more and more intimate." —Waylon Lewis

To Embrace the New / August 11, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power." —Alan Cohen

Craven Art / July 30, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

On Saturday I shot a wonderful Denver-based artist who hired me to take some portraits of her in her studio. Angela Craven is a beautiful, funny, and interesting abstract painter in her free time and a software designer m-f to pay the bills. And I am exceedingly jealous of her studio space. A big open sunroom that's gorgeous, bright and open. I've never been hired for a shoot of this kind so I was really excited to do it and I'm thrilled with the results.

Mi Corazón Está Roto / July 18, 2013 by Rebecca Tillett

"I never thought this would be me...on this side of a situation like this. But life always goes on, doesn't it? In spite of loss, heartbreak, sweeping realizations. The wind keeps blowing, the rain keeps falling, the sun keeps rising. Eat, sleep, move, live. Do."