The Gallery: Self-Portrait

It's time for the Sticky Fingers Gallery. The theme this week is self-portrait.

I was particularly moved by Tara's explanation as to why she chose this theme:

The theme is actually inspired by Laura at Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy who wrote something that really touched me a few weeks ago and I want to 'celebrate' it through The Gallery.

On tenterhooks yet?

She wrote about photographs of her mum, who died when Laura was just 9.

For someone who has been voted in the Funnest Blog category of The MADS, she sure made me catch my breath with that post!

She wrote: "Luckily I have photos, quite a few in fact. I don’t just look at the photos, I pore over them I wonder what she was thinking, doing, wearing … just any glimpse of anything that makes me feel a bit closer to her.

Now that I am a mother they mean even more to me . . . "

And then on the same post, Mrs W commented: "This is the post that every one of us who has spent years avoiding having our photo taken should read. I’m striving to redress that little phobia – we all should."

Well, I'm going someway to help redress that balance today.

Imagine in years to come, your children looking back over photographs of their childhood. Are you in it? Are you always behind the camera?

Our photographs are the story of our lives, and even if you aren't a parent you need to be in it.

I know many many people hate pictures of themselves - myself included - so if you don't want to post one to your blog just think about what I've said and start making that change.

I am always behind the camera. ALWAYS. I think there are only a handful of photographs of me with my children. In most of them I'm leaning out of shot. Where you can see me I hate to look at my face. It's too big and my skin is not good. Most of the time I'm having a bad hair day. None of these photographs have made it into the family albums.

BUT

My boys love their mummy. I'm sure they only see the Mummy they love and none of the imperfections that I see. From now on I will smile proudly in all photographs and even put some of them in the family album. After all I was there.

Thank you Tara and Laura and MrsW for making me realise how shallow and selfish I was being.

***

I hope you will forgive me for using a photograph that was taken by a professional photographer earlier this week and published in the Lancashire Evening Post today. It's better than any self-portrait I could have taken with the camera at arm's length!

This is me and I hope my boys are proud of their Mummy.

Photo credit