Well, it’s finally happening. I’m staring down the last year of my 20s, fairly unsure of how exactly I got here and what comes next. The first few years of this decade in my life held more than I could have imagined - it started with a wedding over 9 years ago, moved into a several-year tenure of working for a non-profit, then changed drastically when we lost Joel and I quit my full-time job to pursue wedding photography.

The worst birthday of my life was when I turned 25. I was still deep in the midst of grief from losing our first adopted child, and I had had dreams of being a mom by this point in life…dreams that were made very real when Joel’s mom chose us to be his parents. All of that was gone, and I had no idea where I would go next. I woke up that morning and cried in bed for awhile before I stood up to face the world. Then I walked into the place I had worked for 5 years, a place I had loved for the first few years until so much had changed, and I turned in my two weeks’ notice. It was a strange and awful day with a tremor of excitement beneath. I’ve never felt so sure of a decision in my life while being completely unsure of what would come in the future…