The Love I Carry

After losing my family, I explore how the love I received as a child endures. Through photographs, objects, and daily rituals, I trace their presence within me, transforming years of caregiving into self-care and a reflection on lasting love and memory.

Three years after losing my mother—the last living member of my family—I began to turn my lens inward. For years before her death, I was her sole caregiver as she lived with dementia, unaware that the exhaustion and isolation I felt had a name: caregiver syndrome. When my aunt died, and a month later my mother passed away, it felt as though the foundation of my family had vanished, leaving me completely alone. Yet slowly, I realized they were not gone—I see my mother in my gestures, hear her voice in mine, and feel their presence in the smallest rituals of daily life.

I now live in my aunt and uncle’s apartment, where the same trees stand outside the windows and the same apple tree yields fruit each summer. In June, peonies bloom as they always have, fragile yet enduring reminders of love and continuity. Looking at old photographs where they gaze at me with love, or at childhood drawings filled with the freedom they encouraged, I recognize how strong a foundation they gave me. That foundation has carried me through loss and continues to guide me.

Project Overview:

This ongoing project delves into the enduring impact of parental and familial love, emphasizing its pivotal role in shaping identity and navigating life's challenges. Through a blend of self-portraits, inherited objects, and childhood photographs, I explore how early experiences of care and affection inform resilience, self-understanding, and self-compassion in adulthood. By mixing images from the past and present, the project underscores that our identity is not fixed—it is continuously formed through memory, experience, and the presence of those who shaped us. The work reflects a journey from caregiving to self-care, highlighting how love received in childhood continues to guide and define us. My project aligns with the grant mission by presenting a personal narrative that resonates universally, illustrating how love and memory persist across generations and shape who we become.

Final Outcome:

The project will lead to an exhibition showing my recent photographs together with pictures from my childhood. By placing past and present side by side—and at times intertwined—it emphasizes that the past is present within us, and that the love we receive from family continues to form our identity, guiding and supporting us throughout life.