the name

fourth + bramble...the novel.

Hello friends, this page tells the story of how and why I chose the name you see all over this website. Part of the story is about our son Jude, and the day we found out we had lost him. Please proceed gently if needed. Thank you for being here.

Like any good idea I have, it tumbled into my thoughts while driving. Completely out of the blue, the word "bramble" darted through my brain. I couldn't have told you right then the dictionary definition, probably because I was trying to change lanes in the Lytle Tunnel on 71 while also singing Ed Sheeran off-key, but I knew it was something wild, maybe a bunch of weeds? Also felt vaguely British, but maybe that was the music. When I googled it, I had flashbacks to my childhood summers, aimless roaming and picking blackberries along the woods on my aunt's property: bramble (noun) any rough, tangled, prickly scrambling vine or shrub, especially a blackberry or other wild shrub of the rose family.

So a bramble is a wild, tangled, rough patch, but it also offers sweet, tangy fruit and sweet-smelling blooms. It's both thorns and flowers, chaos and beauty. Existing simultaneously. If that's what it meant, well, a bramble was as good as any symbolic representation of my life after June 24th, 2019.

It was a Monday, ordinarily so in the way that these stories seem to go. I arrived at my parents' house after a long day at my full-time job and my mom kindly ordered me into a chair on their patio and then went to help my daughter Emme pack up her toys. I was a day shy of 36 weeks pregnant- a boy! -and as I sat there, my hand automatically going to rest on my belly, I thought, "When was the last time I felt him kick?" His movement had become background music at this point; I remember he got the hiccups a lot, which always made me laugh. I pushed my belly around a bit, hoping to provoke an annoyed shove back from him, but, nothing. With a growing sense of anxiety, I tried to write off my fears as irrational and headed home. Within twenty minutes of being home though, my husband Kyle and I had already dropped Emme off to my mother-in-law and were headed into L&D at the hospital. On the way there, my brain was frantic, praying/wishing/hoping that this was all an inconvenience, a "just-for-your-peace-of-mind"; I'd get a test or two done and be sent back home, exhaling and smiling in relief. Laughing at myself for being dramatic. What actually happened was the single greatest heartbreak of my life. It was a nightmare I never had allowed myself to have coming true, as I lay there on the triage bed and looked at the hand of my favorite midwife gripping mine, and then looked up to her face as she stared at the silent ultrasound screen across the room. I knew instantly.

We decided to have him first thing the following morning; June 25th, exactly four weeks from his due date. Before my midwife Cheyenne came to walk alongside me to the OR, I looked at Kyle and said, "I don't think we should still use the name we had picked out...I think we should name him Jude instead." Jude was a name that I felt pulled towards when I first found out I was pregnant; when I mentioned the name to people they joked I'd be setting him up for a lifetime of repetitive Beatles lyrics being sung any time he entered a room, but I shrugged as I secretly loved that for him. (The fact that I never got to have those silly, simple moments, one that might have caused giggles as a toddler and eye rolls as a teen, is just one of the daily heartbreaks I was about to experience.) I also loved the name Jude because of what it meant: "praised". In that hour, praise was a hard thing to comprehend, but we both knew we were and would forever be grateful for the gift that was Jude and the time we had with him, even if it was just the short months I carried him in my belly and the crushingly few days we spent holding him carefully, closely. So at 9:00 am, the medical team placed our Jude into Kyle's waiting arms, tears streaking both of our faces. He was wholly perfect, with the sweetest tiny nose and beautiful downy blonde hair.

Since I was a kid, I have appreciated photos and the way they can hold a moment, bringing it all back to you. After we had Jude, there are three sessions that I have never been more grateful for, for having those moments held forever. The first was our session in the hospital with Jude. The night we went in, after my mind tried to start operating again in whatever capacity was left, I texted my friend Melanie Pace of Loft 3 Photography. She knew I was pregnant, and knew a text in the middle of the night was probably indicative of something hard, something heavy, but she responded, she cussed, she prayed, she probably cussed some more, she showed up. It turned out she knew our godsend of a nurse, Mary, so was allowed to sneak into the OR. We also were able to have Jude's incredibly eager big sister come to the hospital to meet him, and take the only photos our family of four will ever have. Every photo Mel took I cherish, even the ones that are sometimes hard to look at because the grief and sorrow are so visible, but they're of Jude, so they're all loved in a fierce and desperate way. We spent most of those three days with him staring at his face, trying to memorize the slope of his nose and the curls of his hair, but grief and shock have a tendency to cloud things, so to have beautiful portraits of his face is everything. For Mel to be able to walk into the hospital, so many unknowns, and have the strength and grace to be there with us, to be one of the few people who met Jude in person, and to also give us the gift of documenting that devastating time with such gentleness, thank you will never be enough.

The second session was with my friend Jen Lake of The Organic Lens Photography. I had been doing yearly sessions with Jen in local sunflower fields since Emme was one, and I had already planned to do them that year, happily picturing me, Emme, and her new baby brother surrounded by those gigantic and beautiful yellow blooms. I decided to still do the session, and this was just mere weeks after Jude. The morning of, I clasped on a necklace that has Jude's name stamped on it, comforted by the feeling of that weight resting against my collarbone, reassuring me he'd be part of our session still, if not in the way that he should have been. We also brought our Jude Bunny- the week of Jude's funeral we took Emme to Build-A-Bear and had her pick out a stuffed animal to make so she had something to hold during the funeral services, and he has become one of our favorite representations of our baby boy. Jen and I had decided to do a sunrise session, which seems wildly unreasonable when you have a 3 year old, are perpetually late to everything, and are driving to a field 40 minutes away, but we both knew those first rays of sunlight in a field full of flowers would be powerful, full of meaning and healing. And they were. We danced in between the flowers, I held Em close and spun her around while she laughed, and then I stood off to the side and cried as she snuggled her Jude Bunny close in that golden morning glow. I look at those photos and I see so much light, both actual and symbolic, and it helped me believe we would carry on, and carry him with us while we did.

The third session was with my friend Katie Rose Shartker of Bird and Rose Photography, and was our first family session after Jude and our first time meeting Katie. I had previously booked her to do his newborn photos, and had wanted to do them at one of my favorite local greenhouses, a place I had walked around while pregnant with Jude, touching my belly and daydreaming. We still headed to the greenhouse, and we chased Emme around the plants and flowers, gave her piggy back rides, family hugs, and tickle fights. If you were a customer there that day, watching us, you would probably be unable to guess that we had gone through the unimaginable just five months earlier. It may have seemed odd or even ridiculous to do family photos already, like I wasn't grieving "properly", but I knew how much I wanted to document the joy that still existed in our lives, even then, even if the next day I would be hit with a wave of grief that might pull me under. When Katie sent over the gallery, I sat there flipping through the photos, snorting while I rolled my eyes over Emme's antics (typical three year old shit), heart pounding to see my family genuinely smiling and laughing and not just faking it for the sake of the camera. Was sadness there too? Of course. Its been four years and it's still here; it's made itself quite comfy. But those glimpses of joy that were so clearly documented, right there in front of me, were proof yet again. Proof that even though Jude wasn't in the photos with us, he was. Proof that even though my every day life and my family didn't look like how I desperately wished it did, it was still beautiful. Proof that Jude's absence was a weight the three of us would forever carry, a space we would always hold, a hand we would constantly wish we were squeezing.

These three sessions were so instrumental in my decision to continue doing photography, because for a while I definitely considered quitting. Deciding if I would be ok taking photos of snuggly newborns, of expecting moms, of toddler boys full of energy, of senior guys who smiled (begrudgingly at first), of the mother and son dances at weddings, the moms tucked in close as their adult son towered over them. Witnessing it, all these moments that should have been mine as well. Ultimately, and obviously, I decided yes. I decided that there was room for all my feelings, the whole spectrum that I might have while shooting or later while editing, staring at those details of ordinary magic. I decided that it would be ok to still be grieving my baby, the life I had expected to have, while documenting someone else's for awhile. The why behind the yes was so plainly evident; why it's so important and purposeful to me to document other peoples' lives, and document them now, not later. Document them while they themselves may be grieving, while they may be anxious, while they may be struggling. Jude taught me not to wait, he taught me to really look for that joy that can still exist in the dark and grab on to it tight. He made me want to do that for others; show them that their life has constant beauty, even when it's so damn hard. Not negating the hard, but instead holding their hand and pointing and saying "There, look! Right there, in the middle of all those thorns....see that flower? See that fruit? See the Good in this mess, this chaos, this hardship?"

I hope you join me in finding those moments of joy and light in the middle of what looks like a hot mess of weeds, because I promise you, they're there. These little moments of magic don't happen before or after the hardships; instead, a lot of the time they are right smack in the middle, happening alongside it. There is power to being seen in the tangles, and being told there's still beauty there. There's power in the "and"; it doesn't have to be one or the other, it can be both, can be all, and honestly it usually is. The truth of this has struck me daily since Jude, and it's something I choose to focus on, on good days and bad. The "and". The understanding (or at least the attempt to) of the complexity of being human, of living life. The room for it all.

fourth & bramble reminds me of a place, an intersection, a crossing. My life that June came to such a clearly defined crossing as this; behind me, a Before, and ahead of me, an After. I am not so naïve to believe this will be the last crossroads I come to, but I hope to always go forth with grace & courage, and walk with both grief & love, for they are two halves of a heartbreaking whole.