Flowers of Sorrow: A Personal Project

Making something out of grief, using these pictures to represent #miscarriage as they remind me of ultrasound images; the extreme close up how it felt to know a tiny life was growing inside me, the black, white and grey when the radiant power of that little life went dark. The look of old film to represent things past, the softness of flowers my nurturing body, the spikes of the thistle that something was wrong and the intense pain, both physical and emotional. 

I'm not alone, almost every mother I know has had at least one #pregnancyloss. Let all the flowers in this series represent a life loved and lost.

I used a macro adaptor on a 17mm lens and almost pressed the camera up against the flowers to get this effect. I like it. My heart hurts.

Every day moving, growing, expanding towards a future bright and full, forming a picture of how it will be, who we will be together when you're born.....And then it all turns backwards, inside out, all wrong, it wasn't supposed to be like this, can't I put you back inside?.... and then slowly breaking apart all the newly forged connections, the mental structures dismantled in a fragmented mirror image of all we had imagined. #miscarriage 

I don't usually air personal stuff onto the internet but this is different. So many women and their partners go through this and we rarely hear anything about it, probably because it's tragic, desperately sad and we can't do anything about it except move on. I feel it needs honouring and representing in pictures, this experience that highlights our mortality and human connection through suffering and loss. I do feel connected with all the others who've experienced this and I hope that my images might be seen and appreciated by others who might not have the words or means to express their loss externally.