This past Thursday was Thanksgiving, a day for good food of course (stuffing!! I wait all year for the stuffing!!) but mostly for the simple act of reflecting on our blessings and giving thanks. It also just happened to fall on my mother’s birthday, which brought additional meaning to the day. For you see, each and every year I find that I grow more and more thankful for her – this amazingly positive, endlessly loving, admirably strong-willed, shining light in my life. This person who drove me to countless lessons of every kind growing up {piano, ice skating, orchestra, tennis, the list goes on}, who filled our home with laughter and the sound of her singing voice wafting over from the kitchen, who always took the time to enjoy life and all of the little things.

There is the thankfulness of now – of when I visit her and we share a cup of tea, or go out to lunch, when she asks me about photography, and tells me how proud she is of me for doing something I love. But more and more I find that I’m thankful for then, for things I hardly even realized growing up – that she always pushed me to do my best, but never pushed me to be something I wasn’t; that she was active in our lives, but never overbearing; she was always there to listen, but never pried; that she had this immense trust and expectation in us to do the right thing, even as kids, that helped us learn to trust & respect ourselves as we grew older.

I haven’t really said this before, but I am 110% sure that if it weren’t for my mother and what she taught me, I probably never would have had the inkling that I could pursue my dreams, or have the discipline to work for what I wanted, and do what I now do. That if I got it into my head that I wanted to photograph people’s wonderful weddings, and build a business with no initial idea at all of what I was doing, I should and could go for it, absolutely, and could actually be successful.

So on this Thanksgiving day, I gave thanks for so many great things and wonderful people in my life, but I quietly included just an extra “thank you” to my mom. Thank you for always believing in me and supporting me to the fullest. For all your love and strength. And for just being you. I leave you with some photos I’ve been meaning to share, from a mother-daughter session my dear friend Ala photographed for us earlier this year :) { Thank you to Kelly Zhang for dolling us all up! }

As a daughter, it’s an interesting thing seeing how your relationship with your mother changes as time goes on. As an adult, you begin to see her also as a woman, you start to more clearly understand what kind of challenges she may have faced in her life, what kind of sacrifices she made. The parts of you that are maybe like her become more evident, you find that she may understand you more than you realized, that you can relate on levels you hadn’t been able to before.

Suddenly you wake up one morning and realize that your mom — the one who reminded you to always finish your veggies, or maybe pushed you to do well in school, the one who said “you’ll thank me for this, you’ll understand when you’re older” — is not just your mom, but also one of your very very best friends.

I had so much fun capturing this sweet mother-daughter session. Two women who are both so beautiful inside and out, and have such a wonderful bond…