Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Hannah and her beautiful daughter, Grace, at my cousins wedding. I was photographing the wedding for the couple and since Hannah was a bridesmaid I had the opportunity to snap a couple shots of her with her beautiful daughter.
This past year since the wedding has been Hannah's most challenging. At 19 years old Hannah was diagnosed with cancer. She fought like hell and after two rounds of chemotherapy she is now cancer free! When I posted my blog about why it's important for moms to get in the picture with their kiddos Hannah reached out to me and shared that the photos I had taken of her and Grace at the wedding were really the only pictures that she had of the two of them together. She shared that when I had first shared them she, like so many other moms, had been critical of the way she looked in the pictures. She was still adjusting to her after baby body and the changes that came with having a little one. However those same photos became cherished possessions after she got sick and realized just how few photos she had of Grace and her together. That broke my heart. Here was the beautiful, strong, warrior of a woman with a precious little girl and very few photographs of the two of them together. So, I checked my schedule and offered Hannah a free photo session while I was in Colorado. Hannah, Grace and I headed to Palmer Park in Colorado Springs and spent some time together and even though I had offered to take some pictures of them as a way to bless Hannah she ended up blessing me enormously in our time together. Grace is a lucky little girl to have such a courageous, loving and tender-hearted Mom.
