I think the time has come to retire this space.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I'm still not ready to say I will never post here again. But having two blogs has been splitting me, and it feels dishonest and artificial. There's so much overlap between them for one thing -- that overlap being me, of course. The reality is that my photography is informed by my motherhood, the people I've met in this community and my resulting interest in social justice, the books and blogs I read. I've been feeling really guilty about the fact that I've written so frankly about my experiences at the Drop In Centre here, but I only ever give the people I meet there my other website. I want to own what I write; anonymity is only an illusion, especially here where I've relinquished it to promote my photography.

I was debating taking the site down entirely, but I haven't figured out how to archive it all (boy I'd love a way to convert an entire blog into a pdf, just in case any Adobe people are reading and want to develop a new tool), so I'll leave it. Plus, I really don't want to close the door entirely on ever writing here again.

I sought this space out to reach out to other mothers, to find other people with similar, honestly reported experiences of motherhood. You got me through those hard, hard early days, not the really early days of motherhood, but the days when everyone else's babies were sleeping and mine wasn't. And it was blogging that caused me to start seeing photos everywhere, and your support that kept me growing (I love that I know pretty much everyone who's bought my photos or calendars). So much of the rhetoric around motherhood is about sacrifice and losing yourself, but for me it's been the catalyst to reconnecting with myself, my creativity. (Bea introducing me to Myers Briggs and my ENFP-ness also played a significant role in my transformation: it's been so freeing to discover that I'm not as pragmatic as I thought I was, that Sugar D didn't have the market cornered on dreaming. And Mad nominating me for Best Photo/Art Blog in the 07 Canadian Blog Awards also did.)

Ugh, I'm getting all verklempt. It feels a bit like the end of an era, but I'll still be blogging over at peripheralvision, and I'll be expanding the scope over there, for better or worse. I hope to see you over there, but I'll undertand if I don't, since this kind of means the end of Sin. I meant to close up before the end of 08, to make a clean break, but I didn't have the mental space to do it justice until today. But that's ok. New beginnings always need endings to start.

Thank you for reading, for everything.