Fighting Depression Through My Lens

[intro]This is my story. It’s personal and real. A side of me that many people don’t know about. It’s the start of me sharing myself with you guys. (oh- and it’s kinda long. Sorry about that.) [/intro]Over the years I’ve been asked many times why I wanted to become a photographer. I’ve always answered something to the effect of wanting to have nice pictures of my kids, which is true- but it never felt like I was telling the whole truth. I’m not really even sure that I knew what the real reason was until tonight.

Skimming through old photos, trying to find a specific image for a post, I found myself going back through years of pictures. I’d stop at certain points and look at smiling faces of my kids from years past, and called them into my office see how cute they were. I’d cringe as I saw poorly edited images and thought about how far I’ve come. I still have a ways to go.

I came across the image I was looking for and exported it, but I found myself wanting to start from the beginning and go through all the old memories. I thought it would be fun to look back and remember the start of our little family. So I opened up my good ol iPhoto and started clicking through the albums. Each press of the right arrow key flooded my mind with memories of each particular moment frozen in time.

I smiled a lot and commented to my husband who was sitting next to me about my thoughts on many of them. Then we came to a time when we started to do a lot of video of the kids.

At that point we were in college, well Justin was in college. After we got married, like many women do, I put my education on hold to work and help with our finances. I didn’t mind at all. In fact, if I’m being completely honest, I loved to work.Working made me feel good about myself, and I loved interacting with a lot of people on a daily basis. Some of my very best friends are still from those years when I worked while Justin went to school. 

In college, I was a psychology major. While I thought it was fascinating, my junior year I took a counseling class where my professor went into depth about all the different jobs that we could do with our degrees, continuing education, and what to do about burnout. Prior to that class, I hadn’t thought a ton about what it would be like to listen other people’s problems day in and day out. Silly, I know. I knew at that point that I couldn’t really do anything with the degree I was pursuing, and I was ok with taking a break from school.

When I was younger, all I really wanted to be when I grew up was a mom. Before I had kids, I just knew I’d be great at it. My kids would be dressed in the cutest clothes, their hair would always be done, my house would always be spotless and smell of fresh baked cookies. I would be the perfect wife and mother, I just knew it! Turns out I was a much better mother before I had kids, because that perfect wife and mother I thought about all those years ago, doesn’t describe the real me at all. After we had our second baby, I stopped working full-time. I became a stay at home mother who occasionally trained Pilates Reformer clients at the local gym.

Once I hit play and started watching those home videos, things started coming back to me. At first I didn’t notice anything except how darling it was that my almost-3-year-old Hannah pronounced steak as “shteak.”

As the camera panned the spotless living room to baby Luke on the couch, I remembered how hard I tried to be that ideal perfect mother and wife. I kept moving through the photos, clicking play on each video clip that came up. Noticing how my house got progressively messier, I said aloud to Justin, “How did I ever make it through those toddler/baby years?”

There were some photos of Luke’s first birthday. I had made him a frog cake, and even a theme matching new bib for his birthday party. I thought, “See- I was a good crafty mom.” Then moved on to a photo with him sitting on my lap and I thought to myself, “Wow, I really look chubby.”

The next pictures were of our family of 4, and Justin said, “Aw, pregnant mommy.” That’s when it hit me- I was pregnant, not just chubby. I’m not sure how I forgot that I was pregnant at that point. Really I was pregnant or nursing for about 6 years straight before we took a bit of a break prior to having Gavin.

Not many people know, but those were really really hard years for me. I battled depression off and on. I tried to do a lot of things to snap out of it. I tried to learn new skills, like sewing or cooking. I tried to be a better mom, paying more attention to my kids. I tried to keep up with housework. I tried to be more involved at church and made new friends. I tried to focus on my health. . .

Each of those things seemed to work temporarily, but I found that instead of helping, I was still putting the same demands for perfection on myself.

Prior to finding out I was pregnant with Hailey, I had said that I was going to start focusing on getting back into shape to help me feel better about myself again. My sister and I started working out together and it was going great, and then bam- guess what your birth control didn’t work and you’re having another baby.

I remember selfishly crying because I didn’t feel like I was ready. I told Justin and my sister, but no one else until it was obvious that I was pregnant. I didn’t even tell my parents because it upset me to talk about it in the beginning.

Justin was my saving grace because he was really excited about the pregnancy. Had he been stressed or nervous at all I would have lost it. I disliked being pregnant. I hated the way it made me feel, how tired I was and all the aches and pains that came with it. At the same time I also felt really guilty about it, because I had a lot of friends who had trouble or couldn’t get pregnant, and here I was feeling sorry for myself. I decided to learn all I could about the spiritual aspects of being a woman and bearing children, and that helped me through that pregnancy. (I’ll share more about that some other time if anyone is interested.)

Of course everything worked out. Hailey was my easiest baby, she was truly an angel. (and 3 months after having her I completed my second marathon with my older sister.)

Anyway back to what we were talking about. Going through those images and videos made me cry as I thought about me as a young mother. How did I make it through those years, I wondered. Babies have always been hard for me. The crying kids, the constant demands of raising them, taking care of our home, being sleep deprived constantly, and not having many friends. I felt a void in my life, but didn’t know what it was. There was just this feeling of emptiness that I couldn’t satisfy. 

Justin’s school art projects were interspersed here and there through the photos and seeing the cool art he was producing reminded me about how lonely and worthless I felt at that time. Not that it was his fault at all. It was most likely postpartum depression looking back.

Justin was gone a lot with his demanding schedule. He had classmates, a job, and was doing something that was developing his incredible skills and talents. In contrast because of depression, I felt  like I was “just a mom.” I didn’t see much beauty in that.

Looking at the pictures/videos of myself I can tell that feeling even took on a physical form, as I looked tired and haggard. I rarely really got dressed or did my makeup because I was home basically all the time. Who needs to dress up to clean toilets or wipe bums?

Justin has always been gifted in art. I felt like anything he did was amazing. He took some really gorgeous portraits of Hannah and Luke for a photography class while I was pregnant. I was in awe and always wanted him to take pictures of them for me, but he told me he didn’t have time and that I needed to learn.

He gave me the login information to the online portion of his class and told me to figure it out. That’s the absolute best thing that could have happened. Inadvertently, he helped me through my depression by pushing me to develop a love for photography.

When I started out, I was terrible. Like seriously awful. But I had an interest and a strong desire to get better. Little by little I started to see the beauty in everything. Even my imperfect life.

I stopped caring if my kids were dressed in cute clothes or if my house was spotless in photographs and just photographed our life. I noticed that the most important things in my photos were the connections that were made and the feeling that the image invoked. I wanted my memories to be real and not just staged. I developed an eye for detail and for capturing emotion.

When friends and family started asking me to photograph them, I was surprised that anyone would pay me. I never intended my interest in photography to become a career. I just wanted to be able to see beauty again. Through my lens, I was able to focus on that happiness. To know that my life is good, and that I am enough just how I am and where I am at in my life. That’s my mission in life now. To help everyone I come in contact with to know that they are beautiful and that at whatever point in their lives that they’re at, that they’re enough. 

I still struggle at different times with depression, or with an inner fight to expect too much of myself but I’m able to work through it a lot easier than before with my new view on life. A friend from church recently said to me, “You’re so lucky to have the gift you do. It’s almost like you’re able to see people as God does. You see beauty in everyone.” I feel like more importantly, I’m thankful to have developed a talent so that not only can I see the beauty in others, I can see it in myself. I’m so thankful for my experiences and everything that’s brought me to where I am, good and bad.

What do you guys think? Have you ever struggled with this sort of thing in your life? What did you do?