A Piece of My Heart

As a self-taught photographer, I picked up the camera when I moved to Mississippi—newly married, recently unemployed, and thoroughly isolated in a rural community of 175 people. It was winter. Bitter cold oozed up from the uninsulated floors of the ancient farmhouse where we lived. From my window, I could see the abandoned church across the street. I watched, wrapped in blankets, the weather move over the church and around the fields that surrounded us. Time proved that I was the awkward tree in the front yard, trying to put down roots, but growing them upside down. Yet, as my husband and I wander the ¾ mile loop around town, a raw beauty emerged. As we forged friendships with neighbors and added children to our family, I created images to make sense of my place, to give me bearing.