Growing up with CHD

Childhood is a time to discover the world. To learn and explore and hopefully set foundations for all the things that will be important to you throughout life.
When I was around eight or nine, I learnt that some children are abused or neglected by their parents. I felt grateful that I was having a good childhood surrounded by people who loved me, and I counted myself lucky. Now, although it's not on the level of being abused of neglected, these thoughts all happened from a hospital bed inside one of the UK's leading heart and lung hospitals.

And the truth is, this is what quite significant parts of my childhood looked like:

As curious, intelligent and perceptive as children can be, it takes maturity and being away from your family to appreciate the different lives that people lead and grow up with.

When I meet new people now, and any strange health ailments are brought up, there's always an awkward moment for me as I decide whether or not to say "oh yeah, I was born with several heart conditions, nearly died a few times. It can't be cured, and I'm waiting for more surgery. Just a fun fact for you there." As can be expected, it either leads to a lot of questions, awkward silences, or (a favourite of mine) if we're out, the question of whether I should be drinking whatever I am drinking at the time. Which, yes, as someone living with these problems, I know what I can and can't do.

For the most part, I'm fine with it. I accept the body I was born with and quite frankly it's given me some amazing experiences and perks. For all the rough times I went through when I was younger, I am now healthy enough to live independently, make my own life decisions and only vaguely work around my health with some things. Of course, it's not always easy sailing, and considering it's heart month, it seemed like the right time to shed some light on what it can be like to grow up and reach adulthood with fairly serious heart defects.

This above is me as a baby. Five days old to be exact. I always knew that I'd had my first open heart surgery so young, but it wasn't until my niece was born, and I held her at six days old, a fragile, needy baby who was still grasping the fact she needed to breathe regularly in order to survive, that I realised how tiny and helpless I had been. That when the doctors said my heart had been the size of a walnut while they preformed life saving surgery, they really weren't kidding.

At six months old my second lot of (emergency) heart surgery occurred, as a blood clot had effected the performance of the first surgery. By this point both sides of my ribcage had been broken for access, and arteries removed from my arms to put into my heart. It always hurt being picked up under the arms when I was younger, and it wasn't until I learnt to pace myself more each day that I began building up the strength in my right arm enough to pursue writing as a career. I still don't have a pulse in my left wrist, which is always a fun party trick. My diaphragm doesn't expand probably though, so I get a lot of muscle problems in my back whenever I do any kind of strenuous carrying.

I developed most things quite late. I didn't walk until I was three, and my then weak arms/healing ribcage meant that I never used crawling as a method of transport. In my reception year of school I had an entire term off while having surgery, recovering, and then being rushed in again with fluid on my chest. This is the day before I went to theatre for that surgery:

I remember one of my favourite things about being in hospital was using the bars on the bed as a prison setting for my toys. As much as I disliked needles, nasty tasting medicines and doctors with rough hands, hospital was a second home for me and I couldn't understand for a long time why some people couldn't even stand walking into them. In fact, the surgery I was about to have in this instance wasn't a concern to me. At four and a half, I was more determined to wake up in the recovery room like a big girl – albeit a little naive that it was the anaesthetists who decided when I would wake up (and in this case it was actually two weeks later because of a lot of complications, 0-1 to Sophie). 

Friends were harder to come by. My classmates didn't understand my problems and were jealous I didn't get in trouble for all the time I was off school, and I wasn't well enough to join outside groups very often. A lot of the people I considered friends were ones I met through hospital. Being in together wasn't an unusual occurrence, and play dates to the hospital classroom or playroom were encouraged. Of course, there were rough times. One of my friends died when I was six, and others haven't overcome difficulties as well as I have, but there's a strange sense of bonding that will never disappear for me. In the few instances that I have met people in day to day situations with ACHD, there is instantly so much to talk about.

Nurses were also my friends, teaching me how to use different kinds of equipment and only vaguely assisting me when it was time to take my blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature.

I seemed to be remembered wherever I went, and up until a couple of years ago I could still go onto the children's ward and catch up with several members of staff, who are all somewhere in family photo albums giving me life enhancing care.

As I grew though, I wasn't sure what to do with all these experiences. I was getting healthier, and the more distance that grew between everyday life and staying in hospital, the more extreme I realised the situation had been. Morbid questions I used to casually ask my mum started getting serious answers. Yes, I was given only twenty-four hours to live before my surgery at five days old. Yes, the complications following my surgery at four and a half meant I only had a 50/50 chance of survival in the following days. Yes, the doctors told my mum I may not reach my teenage years.

I insisted for a while that I'd had enough. That I didn't ever want any more surgery despite what this inevitably meant at some point in the future. I also saw a psychologist for several years, and despite my constant smile that everyone commented on, I was diagnosed with depression twice by the time I reached sixteen.

After I got through my GCSE's, I went to college and began exploring who I really was. There were still a lot of things I thought were forbidden to me, from getting pregnant to having my ears pierced; but I suddenly had a lot of friends who didn't know any of my past, which was both empowering and lonely. I could be whoever I wanted to be, but was unsure of the reaction I'd get if I was myself. So I offered my body and scars up as a subject for an 'Unusual Forms' photography project. Media makeup students worked on my face and scars for three hours, making me look haunted and wounded. When I was viewing them afterwards, they seemed to show me as how I sometimes felt: broken, scarred and unsure how to proceed into an adulthood I was never guaranteed to reach.

In other situations though, friends and family made sure I got experiences that I had to give up as a child (including dressing up like a cheerleader), and the more I poked information about my past into conversations, the more I realised that my peers had reached an age where they not only didn't run away, they actually seemed intrigued. It turned out that I had in fact had a childhood different and more traumatic than most.

Life settled into something reflective of normal with a background hum of a heart condition. The only times I was forced to think about my health was in the morning taking my medication, and once a year at cardiac appointments. Even at these I normally came posed with non medical questions, like whether I could get tattoos, or study in America for a year, or change my medication from two pills to a combined one to make my prescriptions cheaper.

And all those things, I did.

Some time after going to uni, I realised it wasn't enough for me to casually mention my heart condition, that the jewellery sparkling from my earlobes didn't signify to anyone the things that I was proud of overcoming. I didn't want to deal with the stares or comments my scars still occasionally garnered. I wanted people to know that yes, I know I have giant scars on my back and chest. And yes, you can ask questions about them. But mostly, I really wanted a tattoo. So I got nine feathers around the scars from my first two surgeries. Coincidentally, that's the number of heart defects I was born with.

A lot of people say they don't mind their scars because they wouldn't be alive without them. I don't mind mine because they help tell my story. They mean that I don't become uncomfortable or emotional when I see ill children, because I know that inside they have every potential to be as happy as their peers. And they also mean that I can pretty much out boast anyone's childhood illness stories in a couple of sentences.

I try to remain pretty humble about my experiences. I know I survived a lot, but it still feels weird to call myself a fighter, or say that I was exceptionally brave as a child, because I didn't know anything else. I didn't know how to be scared of needles or that I was having a battle with my own body, because I was thrown into those situations without a choice. There is no running away from health problems that are inside you. All you can do is smile and try to find the good in things everywhere you go.

Mayday Parade: A review from an outgrown emo kid

I got there late because I was drinking in a less overpriced establishment than the venue which it was at (also my old work place haha). I missed the first (two?) support acts and watched The Maine and Mayday Parade from the balcony.

The Maine

Thoughts during the set:

• I'm pretty sure I only know one song of theirs still. But most of these sound the same so I'm not sure if I'll recognise it.
• Oh! Oh! I know this song! No, wait, I'm thinking of a Green Day song.
• Ohh are they going to put confetti down? Support acts never do that. Nope, that's just a photographer with an oversized flash, my bad.
• Why does the singer keep hunching over the microphone like that? Maybe he needs a massage, or some yoga. I can't imagine tour busses are always the most luxurious sleeping places.
• I need to go to the bathroom. Ah I'll just go now, this song isn't too exciting anyway.
• Their logo looks pretty similar to the Metro venue in Chicago. I wonder if they know that.

Things they said, and my thought responses:

• Opening line: "Don't be afraid!"

Why would we be afraid? Afraid of what, you? Is there something about you as a band we should know?

• "It's okay to be alright."

You know, I think it's more than okay. I think it's kinda a socially accepted norm/expectation.

• "Do you like my shirt? My mum picked it out for me. *slight aw from crowd* just kidding she's dead *super awkward moment for crowd* Just kidding she's alive. She's really nice."

WHO ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU TELLING SEVERAL HUNDRED (emotionally insecure) PEOPLE YOUR NICE, ALIVE MOTHER IS DEAD?

• If you're not having fun, go to the bathroom or something.

Thanks, but I already did that.

• Everyone here should go to the bar and ask for a double. They measure them back there. It's bullshit.

Actually it's the venue policy and most of these bar staff are in some capacity my friends so please don't encourage the crowd to be rude or nasty to them. They can under pour you if you'd rather they not measure it. Though having said that 90% of the people here are underage so I guess the damage is minimal.

• Have a beautiful life, my friends.

I'm not your friend and you clearly hated us as a crowd anyway.

Mayday Parade

Thoughts during the set:

• I know way less songs than I thought.
• Maybe if I just mouth along that will be okay. Wait I'm at the back no one can even see me.
• Oh dear I'm like the cool kid at the back but really trying not to be.
• HEY I KNOW THIS SONG!
• All these guys look like different guys I had crushes on when I was a teenager.
• I'm really glad they're not saying cringey stuff like The Maine.

Things they said, and my thought responses:

• "We formed ten years ago!"

Yeah I feel old now.

• "We love the UK so much, you're so supportive."

We have a really weird, obsessed emo scene here still you mean?

• "This song is called Terrible Things."

That was a really supportive cheer for a really depressing song title. Though this song is actually kind of good if you're 14 and need something to cry at.

Other notable moments:

• Hanging round outside after the show and my best friend says "wow, there is literally every kind of emo kid here."

Jokes aside, midway through their set as I was reminiscing about when I used to listen to them a lot, I thought back to the kind of things I wanted back then. Then I looked to my right at my best friend, watching something we shared a connection with, together in Bristol. We'll be celebrating our own ten years soon enough, after a lot of ups and downs. I've got through uni and have lived abroad and have some really great friends in the industry that I want to be involved with. And I realised with a sad kind of happiness: I've got everything I used to want.

Spelt Saturdays: Chicken and leek pie

This week saw me plunge into slightly more adventurous pastry baking.

Having been on a local shopping binge earlier in the week, I had chicken in the fridge from the local butchers that needed using up, and I wanted to give it more than a roast or fry like I normally do.

Mostly following a recipe from the BBC, I made chicken and leek pie, making a last minute dash to Tesco to buy some of the less obvious ingredients.

I simmered the chicken thighs for an hour with some onions, celery, thyme and seasoning. Using that time to make the pastry, I mixed it in a similar method to that of last week, but in greater quantities as this needed the pastry to cover the top too (maybe one day I will remember to take a picture of this).

Getting the chicken thighs out of the pan, the stock was poured into a jug and used later as part of the sauce filling, the rest was discarded.

The leeks were fried off and mixed in with the stock, parsley, creme freche and mustard. Bacon was meant to be part of this but I completely forgot to add the cooked bacon I already had.

Cutting the chicken into small chunks, I added this to the frying pan and mixed it all together. Ripping a part of the pastry away from the main ball, I set that aside and pressed the remainder into the pie dish, flattening it out and scraping away excess.

Mixing the two components together, it was pretty exciting to see an hour and a half worth of cooking come into shape.

I rolled out the rest of the pastry and coated it with more spelt flour, then drape it over the pie. I didn't make fancy leaves like the recipe told me to, but I did make sufficient incisions for the air to circulate all the way through. Popping it in the oven for half an hour at gas mark 7 made it come out looking golden and fresh.

I didn't have enough time to let it cool before heading out for yoga, but it was the most welcome coming home gift I could have given to myself. I was a little nervous that the exterior would blow the interior out of the water, but it was the perfect slight comfort I had hoped for, the seasoning all blending together perfectly and the chicken being tender and flavourful.

The pastry stuck again but I think it's partly due to my inadequate pan lining than something to do with the spelt, but only time will tell.

Sophie's rating: 9
Chelsea's rating: 9

Spelt Saturdays: Quiche

Recently I've been experimenting with different foods in relation to my wheat intolerance.

Since I'm not coeliac and my intolerance is all about an immediate effect on my body, cross contamination doesn't affect how I feel, and neither do small amounts of wheat (soy sauce, certain crisp flavourings etc).

Over Christmas a family member was explaining the different between spelt and wheat flour. The ancient grain used to be the main staple for gluten based foods, and is even mentioned in the bible 9,000 years ago. As time went on though, and farmers began harvesting more and more, the grain of choice now is wheat as we know it. It has a much higher gluten content and is often processed in ways that the body has never learnt to digest properly, hence there being such a widespread (and sometimes misconceived) notion of wheat and gluten intolerances.

So I decided to give this a test. It's not that I'm struggling being gluten free, but finding tasty gluten free alternatives can be challenging/expensive, plus I've been meaning to get into home cooking more again.

I started by making the pastry, mixing spelt flour, butter and water together. I didn't really take measurements, as when I have in the past, I've always ended up changing them. It was approximately 200g of the flour, 150g butter and 150ml water. Everyone thinks making pastry is hard, but as long as you go in cautious it's pretty easy to get the consistency right. Using the spelt flour was an obvious difference from both wheat and gluten free. It seemed to have a higher elasticity than wheat which made it more difficult to mould at first, but this helped spread it out into the baking dish, unlike the gluten free pastry.

Pressed out into the pan, this is what the final product looked like:

Next my friend and flatmate Chelsea fried off some red onions to the point of being golden and caramelised, and then fried off button mushrooms with half a chicken stock cube.

I added these to a little bit of Red Leicester cheese (I cannot enjoy a meal without cheese) and dropped in three medium eggs, whisking it all together.

After baking the pastry for ten minutes by itself (I don't have a proper quiche pan so the bottom never gets cooked if just goes straight in) I added the two components together and put into the oven for 30 minutes at gas mark 7.

It rose extremely well and smelled absolutely incredible from the moment it exited the oven. It was an extremely painful waiting time while it cooled.

Finally, Chelsea and I took a taster, and another, and another. And then I remembered I had to take a picture. The pastry did stick in places, but that could be a variety of things. I've nibbled on it three times by now and am pleased to report no disagreeable symptoms are to be reported!

Final rating:

Sophie: 9 - Besides the sticking to the bottom of the pan, there were few noticeable differences between this and ordinary flour.

Chelsea (who is cautious to anything deemed 'healthier'): 8.5

So Long and Thanks For All The Bread

This post has been a long time coming, just like the decision I made in the summer to cut out wheat.

Having been misdiagnosed with coeliac disease when I was younger, I spent most my childhood without gluten. It wasn't a misdiagnosis on the "what the hell were they thinking?" level, as even after five years without wheat, the two week 'cheat' period on holiday in Florida when I was 9 saw my stomach balloon but my overall body weight go down (while my entire family gained weight, God bless American food).

When I was a teenager though, I saw all the sausage rolls, doughnuts, pasties, pasta, burgers, sandwiches, and convenience food forbidden to me, and started sneaking more and more. A slice of garlic bread here, a Krispy Kreme doughnut there.

It didn't really seem to be having an effect, so I plunged into a full on gluten diet, and my dietician discharged me pretty soon after, saying that if I had any form of coeliac disease, it was lying very dormant.

As university went on I found myself more and more tired, and after graduating it soon became a daily struggle to get out of bed and go to work. But I figured it was just working life. Fatigue comes hand in hand with having a heart condition, and I had no means of measuring my tiredness with that of other people, so I figured I'd just get on with things.

However, this summer I went to a BBQ where my friend was talking about how horrifically tired she felt all the time before being diagnosed with coeliac disease. She was describing the fog in her brain that made her thoughts slower and her inability to find energy for simple tasks. Everyone exclaimed how horrible that sounded.

The penny dropped. My wheat intolerance had resurfaced.

Pasta now being a big staple of my "yes, I cook at home" diet, I really didn't want it to be true. I tentatively avoided gluten for a week, and suddenly I was thinking clearly, getting out of bed within reasonable times on my days off, and finding I still had a lot more energy left over after I'd finished a task.

I went back to the doctors for a blood test, convinced my dormant coeliac had returned after reading accounts of these type of things on the internet. It hadn't.

But in the six weeks of eating gluten required for a coeliac test, the fog had returned, and as hard as it was to say goodbye to easy meals, I felt a lot better again.

It's been almost two months since I've eaten a significant amount of wheat, and when I can't get out of bed in the mornings now, I know it's just pure laziness. So, long live my gluten-free diet. Though I will miss you so much, burritos.

The Moving Staircase

I caught her eye as I was doing a shoulder shuffle to Dance Dance, by Fall Out Boy. I smiled, possibly too much considering I’d had about six drinks already. She looked gorgeous in her bridesmaid's dress. But this is not the start of a love story. We were in Baltimore, MD, and I was the only international guest at the wedding. I couldn’t help but wonder how many miles, hours and days me and and my friend had spent travelling and planning to see each other. When the first moment came that we realised we had the potential to meet face to face, I felt more disbelief than excitement. I was finally going to meet the person behind thousands of words, hundreds of emails, and hours of sitting at my computer, typing down my trivial life events.

In the lobby of a hostel in New York City, she was waiting for me. Even though we’d seen a lot of pictures of each other, had Skyped and heard each others voices, the bubble of a five year online friendship was about to be burst, and I was about to meet a stranger.

I approached her and we both smiled. She stood up and then stooped down to hug me, being about a foot taller. For the first time since I started interacting with her, I was at a loss for words. She’d meant so much to me, and suddenly our dynamic was about to change, forever. Suddenly she was undeniably real.

Her friend she’d travelled with came out of the bathroom and was excited to meet me too. But a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe ruined the moment, and gave us all an in-person ice-breaking laugh we needed.

“What do you think the secret about Aunt Petunia will be?”

“I have no idea.”

This is 99% likely to not be what our first conversation was, but it was more than likely to be about Harry Potter.

After becoming hooked on virtual gaming site Neopets, I began using it as more than a way to waste the weekends. Guilds were a thing, smaller communities/clubs based on a theme, which sometimes rewarded its members for dedication with expensive or sought after site items.

I joined a Harry Potter guild on 26th December 2005 (like the antisocial twelve-year-old scrooge I was). With just over 30 members, it felt like the kind of place that promoted getting to know each other, not just building an empire for your own benefit, like some others I had previously been part of.

The owner seemed cool, starting discussions about different Harry Potter based theories, Neopets goals and how the site was a nice distraction from every day life.

I learned that a lot of the members actually knew her in real life. The second-in-command of the guild was her cousin, her own mother had an account and was in the guild, and it was a similar story with her sister and school friends. But they never made me feel like an outsider.

After a couple of months we began messaging outside of this community, into each others Neopets inboxes, appropriately called Neomail. I didn’t even know her real name, but we began sending long messages, about Neopets, Harry Potter, and real life situations. Regularly our messages would exceed the 1000 character limit, so we’d send several one after the other.

Then, a time came that we didn’t talk for days at a time. School work got on top of both of us, Neopets was sold to a corporation which introduced real-money spending initiatives, and suddenly it wasn’t the place that we came to have fun. We were growing up, and growing out of giving a shit about virtual pets that couldn’t die no matter how long we didn’t feed them.

So I sent a tentative message.
“Hey, I’d hate to lose touch just because we don’t use this site much anymore. You want to swap email addresses?”

Her response? “Absolutely!”

Things continued this way for a while. We’d never seen pictures of each other, but we trusted in each other some of our most personal life details. She knew minute-by-minute moments of my first serious crush, in which I managed to write months of emails based on a few singular moments of interaction with a boy in the year above, including a diagram I drew on Paint to illustrate a time he seemingly watched me walk down a corridor. In return, I got regular updates about a high-school crush of several months, which turned into a real-life boyfriend for her, and he was included in some of the first ever pictures I saw of her.

We made graphs and charts to better understand the different education systems we lived in. We tried to describe every day things like healthcare and slang sayings, and there were cultural learning moments, like me reassuring her that digestive biscuits are just a snack, not a cookie to help your digestive system. And then Facebook turned into a worldwide phenomenon. And we both had accounts, which made our involvement in each others lives that much easier. Our friendship suddenly began feeling a lot more tangible, dimensions being added to it.

We were reluctant to tell our parents about each other. But Beth broke the ice on her 18th birthday, to which her mums response was “Oh, I know you talk to her.” She was deflated, thinking that she’d kept her internet adventures a secret and part of a rebellious teenage life, but it also made the acceptance easier, and we met a few months later.

I started bringing her up more casually. At first she was “this girl I talk to in America” and then she was “my online friend in America” and then, as a way to sweet talk my mum into the idea of letting me visit her by myself, she became “my online friend in America who I met in New York on that college trip.”

We Skyped some more, our mums talked and met each other virtually, and we sent each other big care packages as a Christmas in July/my 18th birthday initiative. She was becoming a larger part of my every day life, and still we sent each other huge updates on our love lives, our school and family lives, and other little things we wanted to mention.

Reading through the old emails now, it seems as if we used each other as diaries we knew would give us feedback on our lives. Naturally, the first few meetings were jarring. I couldn’t turn to her and tell her all the things that had just happened, because she’d been there too.

Meeting and hanging out with her friends offered a good buffer, and they provided faces to names that I’d already read hundreds of times.

Then there were the landmark victories. The wishes we initially expressed and then put effort the in and granted ourselves. 4th July and Thanksgiving were two holidays she repeatedly told me she wished I could experience, which in due time I did. I’ve spent a birthday in Baltimore, learned to pick crabs and make pumpkin pie and also feel helpless being so far away as riots broke out across the city in summer 2015. I know so much about that place that I don’t understand what’s relevant to strangers.

In 2012 when I had a journalism class, my teacher asked me the first thing people think of when they hear Baltimore, to help me write a travel article.

"Hairspray, I guess"

"Um, not really what I was thinking of."

"Ohhh, Edgar Allen Poe."

"Not quite..."

"The Battle of Independence?"

"The Wire, Sophie, The Wire."

“Oh."

Beth and I found this hilarious, saying she’d over-cultured me.

Finally she made it to England in 2013 with a friend. And it snowed the day after their arrival. England shut down, and doing all the things I’d planned became a mission. Roads were impassable and trains had delays, but I crammed our week full of visits and sight seeing and genuinely exhausting them beyond belief. Of course, we visited the Harry Potter studios and took pictures of every single thing imaginable, feeling the roots of our friendship all around us. We talked about my plans to study abroad in Chicago the following school year, and how many times we realistically could meet up during then. I hadn’t quite grasped that the American school system was a lot more classroom based at degree level than the English one, nor that being ‘only three states away’ still meant a lot of expenses and travel time. But we managed twice.

And then I graduated, and life seemed to speed up. We could go weeks without talking, and suddenly all the drama I’d once rush to tell her seemed insignificant. I knew I was growing up, and she was too – she was finally at nursing school, following her lifelong dream and goals.

But still, I believed in our friendship. I remembered the fear in the back of my head when I first met her, that by taking that step, we'd somehow broken the magic and would lose touch forever, that we wouldn't like who the other person really was. And I remembered the letter she hid in a photo frame on my 19th birthday, with the line "I don't know what my life would be like without you on the other end of those emails." And I really didn't, either.

So when in September 2015 my plane landed in Baltimore and Beth and her boyfriend were waiting for me at the airport, a rush of relief and excitement swept over me as we squealed and ran into a hug.

Even though she had a busy week of classes and tests, she made sure she could spend every possible moment with me. Her family treated me like one of their own, picking up any slack caused by her necessary absence (most particularly on the day of the wedding I’d flown in for).

And on one of my last days before I went back home, we were discussing our friendship. We laughed about our naivety at some things, how we’d over-analyse our friends behaviour which now seemed simple and obvious. And I was amazed she still remembered Mo Pain, the rapper who convinced me to buy his CD on the streets of NYC in 2012, and how the CD wasn’t blank, much to Beth’s surprise.

Having caught each other up on any gossip from people we used to fill our emails about, we marvelled at how it’s been almost a decade since we first spoke to each other.

“Even though we’re not directly involved in each others every day lives, you’re still a really important person to me. I’m so glad we’ve kept in touch despite the distance.” I told her.

“I think it brings a whole other level to our friendship; it’s worth traveling across the ocean for.” she said. And it was that moment that I knew for sure neither of us would ever give up on the other.

Which brings me back to when I caught her eye at the wedding, and we both smiled, it wasn’t the song I was thinking of, or how gorgeous the wedding was. It was of The Moving Staircase guild, almost 10 years ago, and how it brought me there, 3500 miles away. Of how we’ve climbed the staircase of our friendship, and it had moved around a few times, and now finally we’ve reached the top, hand in hand and ready to remain side by side through the rest of our lives.

Or maybe I was just a bit drunk.

Losing The Glass Slipper

Cinderella

This photoshoot was a slight spur of the moment, in that I hadn't thought about my Cinderella concept for quite some time, and originally had no intention of doing any Fairytale photoshoots in Baltimore.

However, talking about the project with my awesome friend Beth Emmerich, she was keen to jump in as a model and we made time during my stay to hit up the thrift store and look for a Cinderella worthy dress.

We also hit up Jewel, getting a large pumpkin and a mini pumpkin, while Beth used shoes she had worn to a wedding. If I could have changed anything about the shoot, the only thing would have been the weather – it was so sunny that some shots were pretty hard to get the camera settings right. Either way, I'm really happy with the end result!

Cinderella is a classic tale of not giving up hope. Of course, one of the most famous lines from the story is "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes", and I was keen to explore the relationship between this idea and its interactions with modern day society.

A lot of people grow up on Disney films, and get an idea of the perfect boy in their mind. They stop at no less and genuinely believe they deserve to be treated like a princess, showered with presents constantly and not be expected to make that kind of effort in return. There's nothing wrong with that, but I worry that it's a bit too idealist.

In my series, Cinderella is waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Prince Charming to come along. Until she realises that sitting around and wishing all day isn't bringing her the results she expected.

After going to the ball alone, she carries her dreams home with her, no Prince Charming in sight.

Like a true Princess who's dreams have all come falling down, she collapses down.

I used Lightroom to edit the dress colour throughout the series, from a darker blue to a white-grey, to signify the fading of her dreams. Finally, Cinderella comes to her senses, picks herself up off the ground, and uses the glass slipper to shatter her distorted sense of relationships.

*the link to Beth's name goes to her Etsy page, where you can see her amazing artwork and merch for sale.