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(Bear with me if you’ve heard this story. It’s important to get the word out!)
Have you ever had the feeling that you are doing EXACTLY what you are meant to be doing? When I started volunteering for Soulumination that is just what happened. Each one of my sessions fills my heart and makes me so grateful for what I have and for what I can give to all of these families. It also makes me grateful for all of the healthy families I photograph and it makes me happy to know they have beautiful pictures to preserve their family memories. You just never know how important the pictures are until you can’t take any more.
What is Soulumination? It is an organization that matches families facing life threatening illness with photographers who are happy to gift photo sessions. For example it might be a child who is fighting kidney cancer or it might be a father fighting ALS who has children under 18.
Years ago I saw a client post a notice of a fundraiser for a sweet baby who was fighting cancer. I immediately offered to do a photo session for them and they told me they had had pictures taken by Soulumination but would love more pictures. I had to look up what Soulumination was and when I did I KNEW this was the opportunity for me. I’d photographed a few families this way but it was just here and there and not very consistent. I wanted to do MORE and knew Soulumination could help me do that.
Each family that I photograph receives not only the photo session, but they also get all of the digital images, a beautiful hand crafted album with matted prints, a framed picture, photo jewelry, mini accordion albums for each person that was at the photo session and laminated pictures for wallets. (And I’m probably forgetting some gifts!)
I don’t always hear back from my families (they are busy and overwhelmed and don’t always have my contact information) but when I do I know how much these pictures mean to them. Like the sweet boy who lost his father to cancer. He wore one of the laminated pictures he received around his neck to school for weeks after his Dad’s passing so his friends could see him and he could keep him close by. Or the parents who lose their wallet and call the Soulumination office in a panic. They could replace the credit cards but they were most worried about replacing the pictures of their angel that were also lost with the wallet.
If you know of somebody who needs a Soulumination session PLEASE don’t hesitate to reach out to me. While I do get a lot of assignments from Soulumination I bring a lot of families to them myself. I would love to hear more.
(If you would like to donate to this important work you can do that here. Thank you!)