It’s Mother’s Day and I’m crying.
Which is unusual these days. I rarely cry anymore.
This morning my godmother — my soul mom — Micki texted me to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. I wrote back thanking her for all the mothering she has offered me and my boys over the years.
And then I started crying.
Maybe because she’s in her 80s now and I know she won’t be here forever.
Maybe because of all the mothering I longed for and didn’t fully receive from my own mom.
Maybe because I know how imperfect I’ve been as a mother myself.
Like many holidays, this day invites a kind of taking stock. Measuring ourselves and each other.
Was I good?
Was she good?
Am I loved?
Did anyone remember?
Does anyone care?
And then there’s the strange performance of it all — the roadside roses wrapped in plastic for ten dollars, the pastel cards with the swirly cursive script insisting on a saccharine sweetness many of us do not feel.
There were years when Mother’s Day gutted me.
During my infertility years in my 30s, I was enraged and depressed. When I saw new mothers pushing strollers down the sidewalk, they looked smug to me. Or careless with the miracle they had been handed so easily.
Women who got pregnant accidentally.
Women who conceived on the first try.
Every story like that pushed me deeper into grief.
There was so much projection in those years. So much pain.
And then somehow, during that time, I discovered photographing pregnant women.
I don’t even remember exactly how it began, only that I fell in love with seeing them through my lens. I had the chance to really look at them. To hold them in my gaze and marvel at their beauty — the newness of their bodies, the curve of their bellies, the dark line stretching from belly button to pelvis.
Something softened in me.
I stopped feeling like such a monster.
And somehow, I created something beautiful out of my grief. I could offer these women something I genuinely meant: celebration. Reverence. Witnessing.
Eventually, with the help of a few not-so-glamorous interventions at UCSF, I got pregnant too. And then Nico snuck in four years later — nearly a statistical impossibility given our history and the fact that, if memory serves, we’d had sex approximately once that entire year.
Life is wild like that.
But even now, I’m still tender around this day. Sensitive to all the weight it carries.
To all that women carry — mothers or not.
To those who lost their mothers.
Those who never got to become mothers.
Those who chose not to become mothers.
Those estranged from their children.
Those who mother everyone around them and still wonder if they are enough.
Those trying so hard to get it right.
And here’s what I really want to say to you today.
This morning, after I told Micki, “Finding you has been one of the greatest gifts of my life,” she wrote back:
“Darling, you are one of the greatest gifts.”
Maybe that’s the blessing.
Not perfection.
Not proving ourselves worthy.
Not getting the day right.
Just being reminded — by someone who truly sees us — that we are a gift.
With love, Andrea
Speaking of photography, the sun is officially back and spring has sprung in the Bay Area! And that soft golden glow in the late afternoon always makes me want to gather my camera and head outside. ❤️
And so I’m opening up my books for portrait sessions again!
🌸 Spring Portrait Sessions
For a limited time, I’m offering sessions at a special seasonal rate:
$550 (regularly $850)
These are one-hour, natural light sessions— easy, relaxed, and sweet.
No need to be anything other than yourself.
My work has always been about capturing people as they really are—
the warmth, the presence, the beauty that’s already there.
✨ Booking Your Session ✨
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