In all my dating life, I had always been the heartbreaker in the relationship. Without fail.

 

And so, as a younger version of myself, I had zero empathy for that emotion. Whenever I watched movies where the protagonist was absolutely devastated by the ending of a relationship, or even worse, whenever my friends went through a breakup… I just could not understand why they were being “SO dramatic”.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I had been sad about the ending of a relationship. But I’m realizing now that it was more because I just really hate hurting people’s feelings, and breaking up with someone is the DEFINITION of intentionally hurting someone.

 

 

So… as life happens: eventually I had my own heart broken, and of course, I felt absolutely shattered. To make matters worse, I was angry about it all because I thought I shouldn’t have felt that way. We didn’t even date all that long!

 

But it didn’t change the fact that I was truly depressed and for the first time ever, I didn’t know how to fix it. So I turned to the only way I did know how to address it: I started dreaming up what a photo would look like that could really represent what I was going through.

 

And that’s when, almost five years ago, the idea for this photo, and ultimately Passages as a whole, was born.

 

And while that was quite some time ago, and I’m fortunately very far removed from that emotion now, I’m glad I waited until now to create this image. Because now that I’ve lived five more years, I’ve experienced heartbreak in other ways and seen the heartbreak of others (and truly understood their hurt this time around). I now understand the depth and breadth of what this emotion really is, and with the contribution of your own stories of heartbreak that you shared with me, I was able to add so much more depth and heart to this scene.

 

 

Looking back on my first heartbreak experience, I had plans to shoot a scene in a desolate landscape, with a model crackling into pieces as she falls apart and dissipates into the air around her. Admittedly that would have been a cool photo (if not a little difficult to capture in this very lush and verdant area of the US that Arkansas is).

 

But that only shows one side of heartbreak, and as I have now learned, heartbreak isn’t a one size fits all emotion.

 

Sometimes it’s in the middle of our “Springs”. Sometimes we’re surrounded by beauty, but all we can see is the emptiness in our hearts. Sometimes we put on a good face when we’re feeling the opposite inside. Sometimes heartbreak is wishing desperately you weren’t alone, but knowing that all you can do is curl up in a ball and hug yourself. Heartbreak looks so different, and means different things, to so many people.

 

By taking the time to think about this photo for as long as I did, to listen to your stories, and to try to share all of that has made this a much more beautiful piece than even I could have anticipated, the day that boy backed out of my driveway and left me all alone.

 

So thank you, to everyone who has ever experienced heartbreak and whose stories are represented in these images. I hope that as I have been able to heal, these images will help in your own healing process as well. And that we can all see the beauty that has come from our experiences, both the good and the bad.