When I was a girl, I lived in Waco. While we lived in the Woodway neighborhoods, my parents had friends who chose to live in the inner city intentionally – to make a difference – to be a friend in the community, but it was also — the kind where the houses needed attention.

When Fixer Upper, came out all of it felt so familiar to me — the nice areas, the areas where the houses really needed work, the light, the trees, the sidewalks, the hills.


I remember spending time in those old homes… seeing my friend live inside them as they were being restored. Sleeping over with my little friends and buddies, all of us in one room with their parents, since it was safer that way. I don’t know if I realized that, either; it’s just what we did. And in areas they were restoring, I remember seeing the walls with foam in the cracks and wondering about it — all puffy and yellow, like marshmallows I wanted to touch. I now know that stuff is called great foam — and it’s nothing like a marshmallow.

I remember my friend Caleb’s kitchen so clearly because I loved it. All I could see was the light, the height of the ceilings, and the openness. It felt so bright and big and airy… but if I think closer about it now, I remember it only had subfloor. I don’t even know if I registered at the time, because it wasn’t even complete.

Everything in my childhood seemed covered in rose colored glasses.

When we moved to IL, I learned the realities of life, and there I learned that bad things could happen, it was gray more often, and we had winter. And in my elementary years, I spent some mornings and after school alone, as a latchkey kid since my mom worked.

This fall, I had Caleb and his wife for dinner – they live in Chicago now. It was the same for him, too – his memories and our time with our friends there were so rich and idealic in a community-family-life sort of way, and when he moved to TN (even though to me that seems pretty ideal), the rose-colored glasses seemed to lift for him, too.

When I was a teen and had access to my parents’ car, there were days I would escape to Borders in Danada (the bookstore at the time), and I would consume the photography books for inspiration – on life.

There was this book, Women Before 10am – kind of like a documentation photography book – women, and I fell in love with this picture… I don’t know why she seemed so happy, so at peace with everything. Maybe I loved her sort of San Antonio style. Regardless, she became the person I wanted to be. She seemed comfortable in her skin, in her body, at peace with herself, and quietly happy and content. I wanted that.

Peace with myself was indeed a journey for me at that time – but my obsession with my body lifted, I started throwing myself into my dreams, I took risks, I made a few bad choices, but I owned them, and started again. AND then I became content…and incredibly happy with the life I was creating, and just then a really great guy came along who had lived some life of us own, and was ready for me.

And much to my “I’m really happy with the way things are” and didn’t want to define the relationship because it was SO good, and I didn’t really want be connected with the responsibility of a house, all the chores that came with it – so that it wouldn’t get in the way, so that he would never resent it … he persued and started making a life for us… he bought a house and before I knew it, my nights were filled with trips to Home Depot. He is so analytical, I found the perfect thing I could grab and carry around with me – and always have a stool if I needed it, while I waited for him to pick whatever he was getting. haha – there’s a hot tip for you.

Our first house, though, felt like a cake walk, even though we did add a bathroom and remodeled the large room. When we found our farmhouse, with so much potential, our vision grew, and the projects got bigger: one major renovation before we moved in, years of our own weekend DIYs, then 4 big ones, and finally our last and final renovation of this year, with the addition of the studio.

AND when we were weary (the girls and I) and tired, and we had spent a month or two with subfloor, that my kids had ruined their socks from dancing in it. AND we had just returned to our house after the floors were refinished, the meal I was making wasn’t perking up the situation, the smell had really gotten to us, and everything seemed out of place. My mind went back to that photo…

And then I looked closer and saw something else – and I noticed the subfloor, she was happy in the midst of construction and chaos.… and how crazy it was in my current circumstance, and how actually in my whole life I had become so familiar with construction. When I attached myself to the photo before, it was about being a woman with strength and calm confidence, and in the chaos of growing up, I realized why she had been so inspiring to me. In that moment, though, it was crazy to see that new connection to the life I live now.

And I wondered… do things live in our consciousness… in our mind, deep in the crevices we don’t focus on or realize until the truth hits us in the face.

Or do we attach ourselves to things so early on, gravitate towards them, and make them our life?

Similarly, I’ve always loved the name, Gwen. Every Gwen I’ve met has deepened that love… but a few years ago, I was looking through some papers my mom had kept from my childhood and realized one of my preschool teachers was Miss Gwen.

And I think about that with how we see ourselves… especially as teens. Does that viewpoint forge our trajectory? Because for me, it did. Learning to see myself as more — dare I say beautiful… or maybe just more than I thought — it changed everything.

And thank goodness I did, because it gave me the strength and hope to let go of my eating disorder… to embrace myself… to look past the obstacles of my own insecurity and move forward into a life filled with meaning.

There was power in that. A huge precipice I didn’t fully understand at the time… but deeply felt. So much so that I made it my life’s mission to do the same for other girls.

For me, it’s never just photos.

It’s always been more.

It’s about revealing and reflecting back the light someone already has… so that when I see it, they can begin to see it too.

This was further highlighted by a story that came up this week.

Back in 2011, I had a makeup artist interview with me, and I remember telling her I liked her so much, but I was really hoping she could learn how to do individual lashes for my senior clients.

She left that interview and went home to learn. And she was great at it. My clients loved her and the makeup she did for them. And what does she do now? She does lash extensions.

That still blows me away.

The story continues. A few years later — 2016 or 2017 — I was taking a break from senior photography and mostly doing weddings so I could be home with my girls. It was after our first renovation, and I was weary… maybe even a little doubtful that our original vision of having a barn or studio in the back for me to photograph people would ever happen. At that time, I had a five-year-old and a two-year-old, and it was all I could do to keep up with them. And then she reached out. She asked if I could take her headshots.

I remember thinking, for sure — come on over. My kids nap at this time, so I can make that work. And her photoshoot was so fun. So good. It reminded me how much I loved portraits. And more than that — it stirred something in me again. That maybe… I could have a place here. Without her coming, would I have let that dream die, I wonder.

Last spring, I remember having a deeply meaningful conversation with one of my favorite seniors, Lily. Her session had been epic; we did a cheerleading session and ended up in the fields. AND her mom, actually, is who I met first, an esthetician who had a health crisis that launched her into incredible healing and furthered her experience and knowledge in her expertise -she has changed so many teens’ skin since then, including my husband’s, who came back from Iraq with flaking skin, until I booked an appointment for him with her.

Lily and I were sitting in my dining room designing her album; she had graduated a few days earlier, and they were starting to dig the area which would be my studio. I think the two of us were equally rocked by the places we found ourselves at that moment… like so happy to be where we were, but when we stopped to think about our lives, there was definitely a whoa feeling. For me, the risk of it all… the digging – the sudden realization that there was no going back… at that point. AND yet, recognizing she knew this in a unique way, since her mom was also an entrepreneur and had clients in her house when she first started, just like me, before she had her store in Glen Ellyn. And the way she mentioned having to always be quiet when clients were there, I smiled, recognizing that, at that very moment, my kids were upstairs being quiet, just like she spoke of. I laughed out loud. It was amazing that she knew all the little details of this life, and suddenly I felt not so alone, and it confirmed, even as I wavered in the reality of the moment, that this was the right move forward.

As we talked about how she had just graduated and everything that would no longer be and everything yet to come…I remember how big and how surreal it was when I graduated, how suddenly everything was before you…and things that weren’t really important – you could finally admit, actually weren’t, and things that were important remained. There was so much clarity. AND you recognized that you got to walk your own road and decide everything from then on. AND that everything was before you, at a huge precipice, like a cliff – ( I picture this like … Anne of Green Gables overlooking the water on Prince Edward Island with her bestie Diana, the sun setting over the water, making everything golden, and the wind blowing their hair back. I think we talked about the Cliffs of Moore because of her dad’s Irish roots. Lily was headed there that summer… we were each on a precipice.

If I am accurate on this, we stand at a precipice multiple times in our lives.

AND in that moment at Christmas time, when everyone else in the world seemed cozy in their Christmas decorations… we weren’t. The girls and I were weary of the dust, the smell, the feeling of being overwhelmed by all that still needed to be done. Our house felt anything but ours… or cozy. So when they were grumpy about being back, I showed them this picture and explained what it had meant to me. The photo caught their attention – maybe my story of how i would sit and look at a book on the floor of the store surprised them, and thinking about her floors that made us wonder – what were the floors like of the house when it was first built?

As our house is about to turn 90 in a few years, we wondered what it would have been like all those years earlier. What would have been around this house? What would have been the view? The stories from our neighborhood historical walk came to mind, and we wondered more about our little house, pictured the time period, and wondered who had lived here before us and what their names might have been.

Clinging to the imaginative idea, we found ourselves invigorated, we could give them names… so we landed on Gertrude and Charles (G & C), and inspired by The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever… a little girl named Gladys. We imagined their life in this little farmhouse — surrounded by farmland, long before the additions, long before us.

And wow… leave it to imagination to change everything.

Our mood shifted.

We felt lighter.

Less weary.

And in a strange way, we were standing on a precipice of our own… just with a different perspective, and a choice in how we moved forward. A different lens. Our own version of those Waco rose-colored glasses. Only this time, we had chosen them. And I think that matters more than we realize — the way we choose to see something…how it quietly shapes the path in front of us.

As we thought more — Gertrude — in her little home, on a cold December night, the farmland stretched out around her. The huge Cantigny house miles away, like Downton Abbey, with its horse barn — St. James — just a bit away… something we could bike to.

What were her hopes? Her dreams? Did she get what she had hoped for? And somewhere in the middle of imagining her life… we felt something settle in ours. Not because everything was finished. Not because everything was easy. But because this is part of it. The construction. The mess. The not-quite-done things… and the done things. And maybe… we are always stepping into something someone else began. Standing on foundations we didn’t lay. Adding our own layer to the story. And maybe it’s the women along the way — real, remembered, imagined —who quietly shape us more than we realize.

And maybe it’s also the way we choose to see it all…

that shapes where we go next.

And somehow, in that moment…

That gave us strength to carry on.