Twenty years later is a personal photography story diving into my grief as a bereaved mother. My daughter died twenty years ago this coming January. Over the years I've gotten an advanced education, devoted myself to therapy, and devoted my artistic process to my grief. I wrote a short memoir in which I question grief, stigma, definitions of motherhood, procreation and what it means to continue procreating after loss or choosing not to procreate and the societal judgment of all of it.

Each day as I research, contemplate, and photograph the questions I have around motherhood, loss, grief, kinship, continue to build while the answers continue to elude me. This project is my response to those moments, the questions, and my way of creating answers. It’s how I'm choosing to look at my experience, how I'm choosing to share it, and how it sits with me after all these years. There are self-portraits, glimpses of light, areas in which I visit, glimpses of others in my life, and hidden feeling that emerging. Moments of contemplation around my loss come largely from the process of analyzing my images through creative writing. w

Below I’ve included some writing from my creative nonfiction memoir.

Religion, how I adapted at twelve set the tone.

Youthful indiscretion

Lost what never was.

Babies having babies

Nothing but sorrow

Torn from my body

Swollen breasts-no pump

Unexpected

Never-ending pain

Sleepless nights

No introspection yet.

In my arms

My fault

Running didn’t work. Should I keep trying?

Introspection happened, so much that can't be seen-held-moved-pushed aside.

Time for change. Prepared or not.

R. has faith. What have I?

Weeks that follow

Camera in hand

R. has a process. What do I have?

It's my fault. No, that's not right.

But is it?

You all wanted me here, told me to come, made it real. Why this, why like this?

Finally, I grieve?

The camera makes sense now.

The books make sense now.

I still feel cursed

Selfish, abandoned, useless, a bad mother, a bad friend.

Why couldn't I stop any of them, just one?

What is grief? It’s when you know you’re grieving but what comes first isn't grief, it's pure despair that attacks the soul.

It's pure confusion that leaves you in a daze.

It’s a blindness to the world while you live in a bubble of sorrow.

Grief comes when you realize you've been living in a bubble of sorrow, when you try to find purpose and desire again.

B