Rainy Puddles: A Black & White Photoshoot (MONOMAD Contest)

This week, we were fortunate enough to experience some lovely spring weather 🌧🌧 It is a rare occasion when spring arrives early for us here in southern Canada; we typically do not receive warmer temperatures until April. But, the past few days have been exceptionally warm, so we decided to take full advantage of it as a family! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

In order to capture these photos for the #monomad contest, my family and I took a walk onto a nearby trail. Thankfully, the rainy weather tends to make people pretty predictable: nobody was out 😂 Yes, around these parts, rainy weather is a death sentence! So we were able to enjoy the trail without any joggers, bikers, dogs, etc.

Our girls are only 4 and (almost) 3-years-old. They are still at that magical age where life is full of wonder and mystery ✨️ I desperately wish that I could return to that frame of mind, where you are more concerned with how big a splash the puddle will make as opposed to how wet it will make me 😅 I guess at a certain point, everybody simply grows up...

I am not the type of person to view growing up with disdain. Rather, I am grateful to be able to age and grow wiser. I'm more content in my 30s than I was in my young adult years! There is plenty of beauty to be found in innocence, but the same can be said for a life lived through experience.

I am also grateful for the relationship that these two girls have with one another 👭 My sister and I had the same age difference, about 3 years apart, with the biggest difference being that we never got along -- we were never taught HOW. No one taught us how to control our emotions, respect each other's boundaries, communicate in a healthy manner...

We all look back on our own childhood so that we can say to ourselves, "I don't want my children going through that, too..." Or, if you're fortunate enough, perhaps there are some things that you DO hope will be the same. For me, I never want them fighting in the same ways that my sister and I fought... I never want to diminish their feelings in the ways that my own parents did to me.

As a grown adult, and a parent myself now, I wish that my sister and I could have developed a strong bond for each other, for I recognize the importance of such a valuable relationship. I miss the jokes, the humor, that my sister and I used to share -- I could only truly be authentically weird with my sister 🥺 It was a great thing to share...

Nowadays, my sister has moved to Britain. She blamed me for the silence between us and took off. The last I heard, she is engaged, and is meant to be married in the upcoming months. I will not be attending, and I have no plans of getting in contact with her afterwards.

Meanwhile, I wish that I could have turned to my sister, even once... Anytime I tried turning to her for help, I was sabotaged. She would steal my diary to read it. She would speak badly of me to my friends. She blamed our silence on the fact that I smoke!

So, naturally, I pray that my own daughters will have a better relationship. Obviously they have their fights; they can even get pretty physical with one another! 😬 But I also see the hugs full of love, sneaking a hand in to hold, and the sleepy snuggles. I pray that they will continue to have each other for the rest of their lives 🙏💛

Thank you so much for checking out this week's post 🙏 I really enjoyed the way these photos turned out. Rainy days are always incredible for black and white photography... I can't wait to check out some of your posts as well! 💗