dreams of a childhood long ago

In the beginning of 2025 after the wild fires surrounding Los Angeles, I decided it was time to return to the Blue Ridge Mountains where I grew up and had left many years prior. Virginia and its soft rolling hills stood in drastic contrast against the fierce, dramatic mountains of the west that I had come accustomed to. I had been rambling around those gorgeous deserts, beaches, and mountains for about 10 years while I’d rented out my home in Virginia. A home I’d inherited from my mother in 2012 after her passing. It was never quite in the plan to return to it, remodel it, or really do much at all with it. However, I suppose with time and distance everything forms a salve and we find ourselves in that spiral, revisiting old places with new eyes and a seasoned heart.

These self portraits are a cross between documentation and a reckoning with the grief that comes with the loss of losing a mother. It is me wrapping myself up in a self constructed closure that was previously absent in order to shake this home free so that I too can be free. It is me opening the closet door to peer in at the skeletons, laugh in the darkness, and say you weren’t so scary after all. May we all be free and remember to laugh in the darkness.