This is the only photo in this journal that was taken today. The others are from my archives.

Maria was heading out to what her belly dancing group calls the Hafla, an end-of-the-year celebration.

The Hafla is the last dance of the year, and the dancers bring food and dance until they wear out.

Belly Dancing was a seminal experience for Maria, and I believe it helped to bring out her real self and inspired her to leave her bad memories behind.

In a sense, the dancing seemed to free the real Maria, hiding for all those years.

I witnessed this remarkable transformation;  she found her authentic self in that dancing. It changed everything.

She loves the group and the dancing very much. She looks forward to it all week and loves every minute of it.

She got dressed up for the Hafla and was glad to have me take her picture. Maria’s life changed quite a bit since joining this dance group of very remarkable women.

(Maria loves snails, and when we went to the ocean last year, she spent hours watching them and getting to know them.)

Christmas means emotion to me, finding the better parts of myself and my life and catching that in images rather than words. I am so lucky to be able to do both.

I’m learning how to write in pictures to let them tell their own stories. It’s true; pictures don’t lie unless you spend a lot of time on PhotoShop. I don’t.

The images speak for themselves; I do very little captioning here. People say it looks like a photo show, and that’s the idea. I hope you enjoy seeing these images as much as I enjoyed capturing them.

You can form your own reality about them.

I am drawn to the Mansion’s Memory Care Unit. There is so much feeling there. The aides are very special people. Zinnia seems drawn to it as well, and she is much loved there and does much good.

We’re going to spend more time there, including tomorrow afternoon.

Bud and Maria at rest. Portrait of love and trust.

Bishop Maginn’s Last Prom. Someone gave us 75 gowns to give the stdents.

Americana, A Classic Farm Stand. That’s how vegetables used to be sold before supermarkets.

Wave in the sky, New Hampshire Beach

Ellen and Zinnia, The Mansion

 

When Bud came home

Jane and her new cat, the faces of Memory Care

Bishop Maginn’s Last Prom

Americana: The Yellow Barn, Route 22