When Timelines Split

Belief, Broken hearts, Babies, and (not quite) Bitterness

Now where were we?

Ah yes.

I wanted a baby. 

So bad.

So bad I saw my whole life wide and rolling out with it.

So bad I did something I said I'd never do. 

I became certain about something on this earth. 

Ok, that's not quite true. 

I have it backwards. 

It was the certainty about the thing that made me want a baby in the first place. 

Because I could only want a baby if it was with the love of my life. 

And what I became certain about was that I’d found him. 

I also became certain about our story. What it meant and what it was supposed to be. It was such a relief, to let myself finally and fully and wholly believe. I'm not even sure I was wrong to do it. We have to at some point, don't we? We have to have that kind of courage?

I BELIEVED and I let myself believe. 

I wanted and I let myself WANT.

This is NOT a cautionary tale. 

Not an all together sad one either. 

And even if I wasn't wrong to DO IT. I was apparently wrong ABOUT it. He left. He was afraid. He behaved doubly. Triply. Dangerously. My body, kept far from him now, absorbed the impact of his actions against my will.  

The last year and a half or so has been a bizarre nightmare as I try to adjust my eyes to light so different than the light I felt MEANT to stand in at this moment in time. 

I've been hiding a little since– even before– then. I haven't wanted to let any of you see. I shaved my head for a full reveal but stopped feeling like anyone

a. wanted 

b. DESERVED 

my (are they ever really ours?) revelations. 

So, I've been angry. Not just at him. At this. At life. At men. At women. At you. 

At all of it.  

Resentful, really. Wronged beyond reason. Slighted beyond what I felt I was owed. Still trying to act in integrity while smelling a stink of entitlement on me that temped me into shame. 

Betrayed so deeply it felt like a stab wound in my right side with the knife still stuck in it. A knife I couldn't pull out. I tried and tried. And tried. 

On the darkest days, this world and my mind kept trying to convince my soul of being both too much and not enough at once. 

I was so pissed off. 

Because-

Hadn’t I given my everything? And wasn't that everything glory? Hadn’t I been brave and lead the way? Hadn't I stopped trying to lead the way and stopped claiming credit for even that?  Hadn't I loved completely? Raw and messy—scared but doing it anyway - with all my guts, my life-worn and sun-damaged beauty — pure and trembling and not always right, no -  but always and forever vulnerable, open, true?

So where was mine? Where was my love? My huge success? My thanks? My support? My recognition?

I known, I know. 

The entitlement I spoke of. 

But I will not belittle my heart here by offering the bright side of the story. I will not name the gratitude + weary trust I was also carrying — of course I was.  

This isn't about that part. Just let me burn this off while the fire is here. 

If you're following me on instagram, you know I've been back east. A trip full of miracles. I saw friends there who can see. Can hold. There was no plan but I spoke some of these words out loud. With one friend, in her home, my catharsis came- tears and my grief distilled to piercing purity, sharp in the way a feeling needs to be to leave the body - must form to make a clean exit. 

“I wanted it. I wanted a baby.  I wanted it all so bad,”

I burst out to my friend, shaking.

She put her arms around me. 

And I knew she was not just listening but feeling with me. Almost as me. Two hearts made one in a moment of simple care.

I told her about a family I was going to photograph. They were living a life like I thought mine would be. Three kids from a first marriage. A home by the ocean. Her lover by her side. Plus a baby (one that came after a long fertility journey).  A FAT, GLORIOUS BABY, barely a year old. 

In fact, this client found me when we were both fresh from divorces. Our kids the exact same age. Our broken hearts and hopes shooting chaotic beauty from us then, like lighting. Women are electric when they first get divorced. “Dangerous.” Like fireworks. Everyone wants to watch. Most know not to touch. 

We were both sparking.

This ‘client,’ didn't introduce herself to me that time, but heard me teach one of my very first “big classes.” Yeah field trip. An event that also forged me. 13 years ago now. She felt our parallel universes. Our simpatico rhythm which beats beyond the simple facts of our lives. And she sat with it. She sat with it through her own living, loving, heartbreak and burning. 

13 years later, In spring of 2025, she reached out for a session. A little more than a year after my heartbreak, the timing felt perfect. 

I tried explaining this to my friend with her arm around me. I tried to articulate the strange magic of it all.

“That sounds horrible,” 

my friend said. 

Her tone was compassionate. Wise. 

“That sounds like it will be really hard to do.”

“I mean, yeah.”  I said. 

I was shrugging. Sad. Sincere. 

“But it wont be.”

“Because when I get to be near their love, it's like I have it too….”

My explanation waned. It was late at night and we were both very tired. But I believe my friend understood because I have seen her hold love in her body like what I was trying to describe. 

I told her how it makes me feel like a hallmark special, but that I really believe my own bullshit. 

That ‘I’ is also ‘us.’ That ‘them,’ is also and always ‘we.’

Yes, I recognize that because of the pain we all carry, because of all the times we’ve tried to really believe and  love wholly and it's backfired —such a truth is so fucking hard for our human hearts to keep opening to. Smashed up and conditioned and exhausted as they are. It's hard for my heart to keep opening too– 

probably harder than it's ever been. 

Which frightens me.

Still, here she is. My heart. As silly and as brave and as sad sometimes as  a rodeo clown. 

When I make photos. When I take time to truly look, not just with a camera but with my eyes, at anyone (which rest assured, I do NOT always do) - I feel their heart, their demons, their beauty, their story both as a witness and as if it were my own. 

I feel it like my friend –just a moment ago in our story above— felt me. 

My pain, her pain. 

Their joy, my joy.

Their struggle, our struggle.

Their abundance, my abundance.

Because isn't it? 

If they let it be (and they did).

If we all have healthy boundaries (and we do).

Isn't this what is possible as human beings? Is this not what we are here and meant to do? Share everything? Recognize it all; the horror and hope – as ours, as ourselves? Together? To help each other hold? To say yes to it all- to stop separating, stop trying to blame, divide, protect or push any of it away? 

Is this not love? 

Is this not the simple truth all the patterns of repeated harm and  hurt in relationship and the world at large is asking us to learn while we – too often, fail to listen? 

While we, in our unfelt grief, keep making it all so doubly, triply, dangerously difficult?

I think so, tho I've learned not to be certain. 

I think we heal and come home and remember this way. With each other.  I think life gives us what we thought should be ours, in endless varieties if we activate the sort of creative sight and courage to recognize it. I think parallel universes where your ‘no,’ splits into a yes for someone, are somehow moving along side of you even now and now and now- rhyming and harmonizing- a cross between mercy and a brutal, beautiful, cosmic joke. 

The lie was always that you have to own or be defined by any of it. Have to make it yours alone and invent a them that you protect it from.

I don't want to lie.

I don't want to hide. 

I want to let you see.

I have been told to let you see.

I have been lead by my teachers (click on their names for goodies):

James. Nina. John. Mary. Ram. Maya (Part 2). Adrienne. Adrianne. More…

So I will try again.

I will let you see. 

I will fail at times. 

I will forget at others.

I will be human. 

With you. 

I will shepherd this rodeo clown heart that returns to beauty again and again believing that beauty is our purpose on this earth. 

I will keep dropping to touch down and deep into the dirt and filth here which I am also made of. 

I will remember over and over what I believe, that I -that we, despite every evil, with shared shadow and light—

are free.

Then for the thousandth time, I will like those before me, attempt flight. 

For the thousandth time, I will, invite  you to attempt flight with me. 

These are some of the photos I made with the client I've written about here and her  gorgeous family. This is some of my  story meeting theirs– a story  just as human, just as unique, just as stunning, just as true. 

Same same. But different. Like the cringe  tourist t-shirt I bought in India. And would absolutely buy again. 

Thank you so much, to my friends and the Slater family. 

Thank you so much for you. 

xx,

Yan