Family | The Last Krystallos

I love having my photo taken and it’s accompanied me into my adult life…not so much the vanity of photos of me, but photographs of my family.

I’m a perfectionist, so family shoots, taken with a tripod at home, have sometimes been somewhat stressful, but I love documenting our family and growth!

I have many, many family group photos to choose from to document my own family over the years. Check out our latest offerings: Steampunk and Post-Apocalyptic…

Now, my Dad was a photographer, and I loved the shots he got of me when I dragged him out to accommodate my teenage posing…but I am surprised that we don’t have many family group photographs from my childhood. Not always easy, I understand, as there were 15 years between youngest and oldest, so to get all four of us together probably wasn’t easy over the years…so I searched to see what I had…

This is the earliest I have, Dave, Mark, Jules and I, back in 1983 when Jules was almost 7, Dave was 11, Mark was 22 and I was 12.

Then three years later in 1986, recreating the pose…

And 1989, another three years later and I’m eighteen…

The next time together was for my wedding in 1991…

Seven years later Mark came over from Switzerland, I came down from Wales and we all met up back in Brighton…1998

Another big gap of thirteen years and we have all just got together again just this month, August 2011…

So there we are my siblings and I over the years…

When it comes to complete family pictures it’s the same story…I can only find two with all of us and my parents and a twenty year gap between each photograph…my wedding and this month…

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.

Families are like fudge –

mostly sweet with a few nuts…

…and that says it all…

I’ve often wondered what brings real happiness… after all a couple just won £56million on the National Lottery, would that bring me happiness? Erm…probably! Yet I don’t have a fraction of that and I’m happy.

There’s no doubt that a million or two would contribute to my happiness, but money won’t be my ultimate path to happiness!

‘All you need is Love’… maybe, but not necessarily that recently celebrated Valentine love…it does help to have a soul mate and a friend, but the love I’m talking about is the love you have for yourself.

‘ To love oneself is the beginning

of a lifelong romance’

(Oscar Wilde)

I turned from a quiet and shy schoolgirl, into a teenager caught within a cage of responsibility, desperately trying to assert and rebel, to a young woman finding love and needing acceptance, but I had no idea who I was… I had become a wife and a mother, but who was I?

Are we ever truly happy with who we are? Seven years ago I extricated myself from a breakdown and set about discovering myself…

Back in 1989 I wrote: ‘I want to be everything everyone wants me to be, but I’m not sure I know how, I don’t even know how to be me…’ then in 2004 I began to exorcise my demons: ‘I wanted to be everything everyone wanted me to be, but I didn’t know how to be me, so I tore off my mask and ripped out my heart, and left my soul bare to bleed. I clenched my fists tight and screamed out loud, now I’m learning how to be me…’ It took another four or five years before I could close that chapter: ‘My heart is now open and clear to see, and I don’t feel the need to please. People can take me for what they want me to be, but I only need to be me. My heart can soar in a world of its own, and no one can stop me at all. For over the years there’s a lesson I’ve learned, and I know exactly how to be me.’

So what makes you happy? I think it’s knowing who you are and making the best of yourself and finding joy in what is around you…allow yourself the freedom of being who you are meant to be.

To me, that’s recognising your greatness within.

‘To be a star you must follow your own light,

follow your own path,

and never fear the darkness

for that is when the stars shine their brightest.’

(anon)

Happiness for me is…family, a walk in the snow with a loopy dog, throwing snowballs, laughing and being together…it is writing and losing myself in the story within my head…creating scrapbook pages full of memories…painting and drawing…knowing who I am in the great scheme of things…and sharing that love with those around me… and yes, I found myself. ♥