I became a mother in August 2010. My main focus until that point had been my photography, which took me all over the world, on editorial and NGO assignments, and I loved it. My life has taken on a different scope and pace since then: whilst continuing to work when I can, and certainly to photograph, my focus now is primarily on the day-to-day business of looking after two small people (our second child was born in December 2012). My location has largely been home, though change is adrift again, our youngest child having now started to go to nursery.
At home, I have watched our son’s growing interaction with the world, and then begun watch my daughter’s. I have been able to see how raw and full of wonder life is when experienced for the first time: the sight of fire, the taste of an apple, the sensation of being sprayed by a sprinkler, and I have experienced this wonder again myself, watching and sharing in my children’s responses to the world.
My life has slowed down. A few years ago a typical day might have been spent following a child soldier’s reunification with his family somewhere in West Africa; photographing stories of flight and survival in a refugee camp; or negotiating with an embassy to let me into a country where journalists aren’t welcome. Now, I might now spend a whole morning helping my daughter to collect and pile grass cuttings into her trike, watching squirrels climb trees, or riding buses and trains for the sake of it. (In my new life as in my old, the journey is the destination.)Watch Full Movie Online Streaming and Dow
This period of my life sometimes feels incredibly frustrating – the repetitiveness and mundanity of the task of caring; the isolation; the tantrums you are rewarded with. And although occasionally I want to speed things up, and my mind wanders back to the road, mostly I am glad that something has enabled me, demanded of me, for the first time really, to live in the present, be observant and appreciative of the little things, be less dependent on big journeys and high dramas for stimulation.
A friend told me, not long before I first gave birth, that becoming a mother had opened her up to ‘a broader spectrum of emotions’, and of all the things I have been told about motherhood, for me this has been the most accurate. Being a mother has introduced me to new levels of elation, exasperation, satisfaction, self-questioning, trust and friendship. It has involved me in dramas of a different scale and frequency to the ones I used to be drawn to in my work. This feels like as emotionally rich a period as I can imagine; one that will feed into the rest of my life – and, I hope, my creativity.
