We’ve now entered the final couple of hours of 2015 & are approaching the dawn of a brand new year and I’ve realised that it can be all too easy to define a year by the less-good things that have happened: the bad feelings and negative thoughts; moments of devastation and struggle; times of chaos and disruption; periods of sadness and disconnection.  All the dark stuff that goes on for all of us and casts long and heavy shadows over our lighter, more stable ground.

As my husband is at work and I’m celebrating the start of 2016 in the company of a softly snoring kitten, I decided to look back through all of the photos I’ve taken this year (and believe me there are a lot, so it’s taken me quite a while!). For me, my photos are my memories and looking through them is the equivalent of time travel – I’m instantly transported back to the split second I pressed the shutter, feeling all the same feelings.  Most people tend to capture only the special moments, the celebrations and the extraordinarily good times.  I’d made it my mission throughout the year to capture the ordinary moments too.

As I lost myself in the images on my laptop screen it became so clear to me just how many wonderfully ordinary-yet-beautiful moments there have been, despite all of the difficulties that my family and I have been faced with this year.  So I thought I’d choose my favourite image from each month (completely disregarding whether it is technically photographically perfect or not and focusing solely on the emotions it evokes when I look at it), with a view to making this an annual feature on the blog – more for my own personal records than anything.

I don’t want 2015 to become known to me as ‘the year my Dad died’ because, as devastating as that was (and still is), it’s clear to me from the photos I’ve chosen that 2015 was a lot more than that.  It was the year of my tribe.

So this post is just a reminder for me of all the good times that did happen, the happy moments that I played a part in creating throughout the year – the joy, the laughter, the smiles, the beauty.

January:  Blowing away the January blues with a stomp around Birches Valley

February:  Even in the middle of the hardest month of my life, these four girls never fail to make me smile

March:  A visit from my Mum

April:  Sophie came to stay during the Easter holidays

May:  A birthday selfie

June:  A month of celebrations!  Our one year wedding anniversary and our friend’s ten year wedding anniversary

July:  Mum sharing stories with my girls.  Passing down family history in the most meaningful of ways

August:  Harry Potter Studio Tour! 😀

September:  Our holiday in Cornwall

October:  Having Sophie to stay for a few days over half term

November:  The weekend we added Pumpkin the kitten to our family

December: Festive fun

I’ll leave you with a quote, which I think pretty much sums up what I’m trying to say…

“Life is amazing.  And then it’s awful, and then it’s amazing again.  And in between the amazing and the awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine.  Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful and relax & exhale during the ordinary.  That’s just living a heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful”

L.R.Knost