In a couple short weeks, my oldest will be heading off to middle school and my youngest will be starting Pre-K, which means that for the first time in almost five years, my margin will be getting a little big larger. As I’ve been dreaming about how I want to use that time, it’s become really clear to me that I want to grow my photography business and I can’t quite shake this feeling of starting over.
Just about seven years ago, I was in the beginning stages of starting my business. I agonized over choosing a name and settled on This Savored Life Photography because I knew that while I wanted to document your family, I wanted it to be about more than just beautiful images. I wanted to meet you in all of the twists and turns of life and create a community of motherhood where we could collectively find ways to savor this one wild and precious life. I’ve had a LOT of ideas of how I wanted to do this over the years, but with each passing year it seemed my margin only kept getting smaller with the birth of our third child and the chaos and joy of raising three little humans. I did my first official family session seven years ago this fall, right before sending my now middle child to preschool two mornings a week, unable to process what I would do with four entire kid-free hours a week (the luxury)!
Over the course of the past seven years, I’ve had the immense privilege of documenting so many families. With only little slivers of time, my business has already blown my expectations out of the water. I truly cannot believe that I get to do this work. I’ve walked along families through births, weddings, and seen families year after year who have become my friends. And yet, as I head into this fall with intention, planning on how I will use this larger margin of time, I am finding what is surfacing are many of the dreams I had when I started this business that I haven’t had the margin to implement and this nagging feeling of failure and defeat when I wonder what my business could look like now if I had done all the things I wanted to in the beginning.
And while it feels like a turning point, it isn’t a beginning. I’m not the same person who started this business. All the detours and roadblocks I’ve met along the way have grown something in me that I’m proud of. And if you are in a season of life where you feel like you’re starting over, I promise the same is true for you. We are heading into this new season as changed people, maybe with some of the same dreams, but with new capacity to chase them.
So here’s to us who are beginning again. Here’s to dreams left unrealized and new dreams that are yet to be born. Here’s to all the ways we will continue to grow and the detours that will lead to our becoming.
“As you set out on this new journey,
may you learn to rest before you collapse.
To slow before you fall.
To stop before you break down.
To simmer before you blaze.”
As I continue to dream about the places I’d like to take this business, I’d love to hear from you! What would serve you the most in your current season of life? What would you like to see me offer more of? One of the things that has been brewing in me is a desire to have opportunities to gather together and create. And if you don’t know, but want to share one area of life where you are beginning again, I’d love to hear that too!