Leisa A. Hammett

H2H Book Photographer Rebekah Pope & Others Exhibit @ Jewish Community Ctr.

Funny how life works. Meeting friends and friends of friends for drinks led to a lead of a local photographer who photographs special needs children. That's how I first met Nashville native Rebekah Pope in Fall 2008 when she did a portrait session with my daughter, who has autism. Little did I know then that my decade-long dream of writing and producing a coffee table book about families who live with autism would culminate in a "yes," after many polite rejections from other local photographers with whom I'd inquired the previous two years.  A phone call to Rebekah, just before Christmas, that same year, led to a meeting in the new year of 2009. And, from that meeting sprung-forth, From Heartache to Hope:Middle Tennessee Families Living with Autism, which benefited the Autism Society of Middle Tennessee, and would set in motion a whirlwind project that produced a book and a video within an unheard of nine months from conception to printer. Eighteen Middle Tennessee families and nearly 40 volunteers came together to support myself, Rebekah, publisher Tim Fields of Fields Publishing, Inc., and designer Mary Sweeney of mSweeney design.

While Rebekah's bread and butter is child and family portraiture, this, below, is where her passion penetrates her camera lens. I am blessed to have come to know and befriend this quiet woman, so opposite of me in personality. Rebekah is also a woman of deep kindness and possesses great reservoirs of earnest, sincere Christian faith. And, she actually lives out that faith. I am proud to call her a colleague and friend and share again here with you her work.

This image above was photographed in Warsaw. Rebekah will be exhibiting additional black & white photos taken during recent years in various international locations plus the American West. The photos were each hand-printed in the traditional wet darkroom on silver gelatin fiber-based paper. (Can you say "lost art?") Says Rebekah: "What pulls all the different images together is my style of imagery which is more pictoral, soft imagery."

See Rebekah's work, once again, at the Gordon Jewish Community Center, in west Nashville, Thursday, June 2, 7-9 p.m. Joining Rebekah in this exhibit are artists Mark Shinkarev and Kristen Llamas. (Rebekah and I participated in two From Heartache to Hope related events at the GJCC where new-ish gallery director, artist, performer friend Carrie Mills is rocking the place with visual art each month!)

Fruits of Summer: Lisa Ernst's "Raspberries"

 

"Art imitating Life?" Featured here, artist Lisa Ernst work, "Raspberries." (Acrylic on canvas.) When I received Ernst's newsletter several months back, this lush still life screamed SUMMER! to me. May you enjoy feasting your visual senses on this the art of this delicious summer fruit. Then: race ya to the produce stand!?! See more of Ernst's work featured on LeisaHammett.com right here.

Ernst is also featured at the Vanderbilt Medical University Gallery (Main Lobby) now through August 30, in an exhibit entitled "Botanic Immersion." The first time I featured Ernst's work here, the post focused on the connection between art and medicine in Ernst work and also featured artist Susan Gosgarian McGrew, M.D. Writes Ernst in her blog about her current VUMC exhibit: 

"Vanderbilt Medical Center and their director of cultural enrichment, Donna Glassford, have long been dedicated to healing art in health care. My own focus on healing art began nearly ten years ago with a commission from M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Hospital in Houston, TX. After that I began learning about the growing body of scientific date on the effectiveness of original art in reducing stress in patients, families and health care providers. Over the last eight years I've been commissioned and sold art to numerous medical centers including Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago and the new Middle Tennessee Medical Center in Murfreesboro."

Listen. Know. The Path of Autism

She's embarking on an unforseen journey, my new friend. To her and others fresh to parenting a child with autism, I share from my experience that began nearly a decade and a half:

 

Knowing in your heart of hearts

that all will be well.

All IS well

...though perhaps a bit too cloudy

   to detect in the

Present Moment...

that

shred

of

buried

Peace

in

the depth

of

your

Soul

is

Wisdom.

More than gold

this knowing will sustain your spirit.

Listen. 

(I believe the Grief experience is universal. So this knowing...this knowing applies to all of Life challenges.  IGBOK.

 

Shaker Art Collection @ Frist

 

More than 270 Shaker art objects—furniture, drawings, household objects, textiles, baskets and kitchen implements--debut at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts Friday, May 20. "Gather Up the Fragments" focuses upon the collection of Faith and Edward Deming Andrews, who from the 1920s through the 1960s formed a large and important assemblage of Shaker art and pioneered Shaker studies. This comprehensive exhibition will provide insight into this intriguing religious group that valued many ideas that resonate today such as equality, pacifism, communal living, sustainability, responsible land stewardship, innovation, simplicity, and high-quality work.

Many of my inherited family furniture embodies Shaker simplicity, including some early American pieces and also several pieces designed by my deceased mother who commissioned them made out of 100-plus year-old family barn wood. During college, my middle sister and her husband lived in Lexington, Ken. Several trips there and since then, with various members of my evolving family, included central Kentucky's "Bluegrass Loop," which encompasses the nearby Pleasant Hill, the nation's largest restored "Shaker Village."

Except the bit about no sex, I love Shaker art and culture. You?

Getting Real. What a College Degree Means...or Does Not

It's graduation time. Going back over some older "Journey with Grace" blog posts--mining their contents for my current book project--I found this post I'd never published....I imagine that especially for families who have typically developing siblings in addition to a child with special needs, graduation time can bring some pangs of grief. The grief cycle is like that. (See my post: The Ebb and Flow of Grief.) I've had my own pangs over this issue and here's the conclusion I reached:

Every other month, as I walk families through the journey to wholeness and acceptance post autism diagnosis of their child, I say this very thing. In my own grief process I woke up when Grace was about five--after grieving the realization that she was probably not college bound. I then realized that a college degree is not a stamp of a human's worth. While more and more people with autism are going on to earn college degrees, many, such as my daughter, will not. I chose to grieve that. And then get real about what it means.

Photo: Grace with her teacher, Angela Cernyar, after graduation ceremonies at Peabody College. Taken by Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, this photo originally appeared here in this post, "The Blessings of Compassion."

Rumi: Dealing w/ Life's Unexpected Visitors

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows

Who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture.

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.  -- Rumi

Phillip Moffitt: Working with Difficult Emotions

"Can you feel joy amid pain? I say: Yes. Definition of bittersweet." --May 5 at 9:45am tweet via HootSuite --LeisaHammett

Phillip Moffitt, former entrepreneur turned Esquire magazine owner and editor-in-chief turned spiritual teacher spoke at Nashville's Scarritt Bennett Center to our Vanderbilt Mindfulness Meditation Group last fall. I've since received his weekly e-mailings, "A Year of Dancing with Life," taken from his book, Dancing with Life. Our meditation co-leader Gordon Peerman, D. Min., a psychotherapist and Episcopal priest, with degrees from Yale and Vanderbilt universities, is a student of Moffitt's. I love the title of of Peerman's book because it's 10 words contain premise of Universalism and also another path when life's road becomes extra winding: Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn From Buddhists About Suffering.

Join me, in "Being Present" to what Life offers up. Namaste:

 

Please note the Vanderbilt Mindfulness Meditation Group now meets at Second Presbyterian. Same time.

Called to Love, Compassion & Community...

"And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you, too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to compassion and to community." --Jean Vanier

I'd say that Eunice Kennedy Shriver experienced that gift and lived boldly with love and compassion for the disAbility community. My post on her 2009 death and her remarkable contributions is here.

The photo of Shriver by David Lenz, above, was recently put on view and commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the First Prize, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006.

In the Community of Motherhood

Photo: Bill Bangham, Father of Click, 2004

The act of becoming a mother means that some invisible hand of life-emotions reaches down into the very pit of your heart and takes a wrench hold.

You will never be the same.

You have joined the universal community of motherhood and. there. is. no. going. back.

If one is alive, human and fully emotionally formed, there is a deep level of compassion that is permanently implanted in you that elicits tears of compassion at the thought of a child being hurt, another mother losing her babe, another's joyous occasion of giving birth to life just as you have, etc.

You're stuck.

You will be this way forever.

It is a good thing.

I believe this is why women are less prone to violence than men. We have literally given Life. And, it is our innate beings to preserve Life and to care for and nurture it. I love being a woman and a mother.

It is a true gift to be one and to have inside of me this well-spring of emotions shared by mothers around the world. Early into my own motherhood journey, I recall being in awe upon arriving at this shared destination. I can also remember first feeling this fullness of compassion and magical connection to all mothers everywhere. I knew that I had arrived and tapped into something deep, bonding and sacred and that is was a blessed gift not to hold lightly but to honor and to cherish.

Here's to the beauty, the fullness, the decadent brimming heart richness, the lush yummy-ness of Motherhood. And to All Mothers Everywhere....

This post originally appeared here on November, 9, 2009.

Motherly Inspiration

"Where design and motherhood and intersect." That's the tagline for DesignMom, one of the internet's most intriguing, savvy blog-enterprises and blog owners--Gabrielle Blair. She's a designer and mother of six--the youngest just reaching the one year mark of life. I began reading DesignMom long before the brood of eight moved to France for the year, which enhanced the blog's already exceptional eye-candy. When Blair was pregnant with her latest, she featured birth stories of readers. Long ago, I snagged the following, which I'm publishing excerpts from here on autism/disAbility Wednesday. I believe many of you readers will resonate with the themes of courage and strength that us special needs mothers must call upon for our journey.

Pregnancy Story from Chelsey Paul, via DesignMom.

[...]"My biggest fear was having a premature child, little did I know I was about to start worrying about much more. We went in for our 20-week ultrasound and the technician began and then she suddenly stopped. My instinct immediately told me something was wrong and she mentioned needing to get the doctor before we switched over to 3D. All the things I didn’t want for my child ran through my head, missing organs, four legs, and worse dead. When my doctor came in he said, “Well we’ve got good news and we’ve got bad, good news it’s a boy and he’s growing well and has ten fingers and toes…bad news, he’ll be born with a cleft lip and we are not sure about the palette.” I sat in silence. What the hell is a cleft lip? Where do I learn more? What do I do? What does this mean? I made the mistake of Googling “cleft lip” and made myself sick for days.

"The problem I ran into was finding accurate, solid information on what to do , what to prepare for. How will feed this child? What should I get? I let anxiety get the best of me. So I went to my blog and wrote this letter to him:

“'I vow, to my son, from this post on to be stronger. To be the mother he needs me to be and that I need me to be. This isn’t the end of the world, this is the beginning of the beautiful life of my son. Things won’t “look” as I had hoped (but that is me being vain) we will struggle and I will cry more (for the good and bad times). But I vow to my son that no matter what it takes I will be there and be there with a strong force driving me. I will pray everyday not only for him but for my family that this will only make us better and that we will form a great team unit. I vow, that until you are born I won’t fret as much or cry (as much) and I will enjoy every minute that you are in my womb until you are in my arms. I will be happy for you and me. I deserve that, you deserve that. I love you.

"Things are uncertain about what to expect, but the one thing I know for certain is that he is my son and I am his mother who loves him…and that is all that matters.” [...] The complete story as it appeared on DesignMom here.

I love how she quickly readjusted her her expectations and saw the beauty in the different journey. Touching--you think?