Kings & Queens – Styled Couple’s Session

I love storytelling. It’s one of the main reasons that I love visual and performing arts in general. My love for it began with my dad reading to me often when I was little, using different voices for every character, crafting the story with his voice, rather than just pronouncing words on a page. It grew from there to embrace things like acting, dancing, singing, and photography. I love being able to craft a story, no matter the medium, to move an audience, to make people feel something, to express creativity. Sometimes I get to do that with clients, which I LOVE, and sometimes I get to do it for myself, and this is one such scenario. I’m so thankful for Dane and Cassandra jumping into my vision with both feet, and pretty excited about how it all turned out!
This particular session isn’t really a fully formed story, but more of an idea and a feeling. Sometimes there are patches of our lives, small or huge, that get overcast by difficult circumstances, broken relationships, illnesses, you name it; everything just seems to turn black and grey for a time. Sometimes we know what we need to do, but we’re just not ready yet, and sometimes we have absolutely no clue whatsoever. And it can feel impossible to know how to love someone who is in a season like this, especially when they can’t help you figure it out, because they don’t know how to either. There’s a lot to be said for wisdom from trusted sources, and encouraging words from those we care about, and I don’t want to discount that. But so often, those words fail to touch what’s really broken. If you hate being in a position where you feel like you have to do something, you have to say something helpful, but you just don’t know what, allow me to take some pressure off you: most of the time, in these seasons, we don’t need the people we love to fix us. We don’t even need them to try to. We don’t need you to scrape together some phrases that sound like they might be helpful, to try to tell us why we’re feeling the way we are, that we should be more like “_______,” or do more “_________,” or to somehow make the overcast-ness go away. Honestly, you probably can’t. So how do you love someone living in grey? Come alongside them, and just be. Be present, be patient, be understanding, be validating, do things with them. Just be there, over and over again, so they don’t have to wonder if they’re alone, or feel like their isolated.

Thank you for reading! If this encouraged you or the photos touched you at all, I would love to hear about it! Comment below or send me an email at kira@kiraadele.com.

Love,
Kira