6 Comments
User's avatar
Mary Baker's avatar

Beautiful and deeply resonating. Thank you for sharing your writing and your heart, Beth 🤍

Beth Bachtler's avatar

🤍🤍🤍 thank you!

Meagen Gibson's avatar

I recently got a small point and shoot camera purely so I could leave my phone at home or in the room or whatever... but on several occasions have said the same thing to myself or others. "Let's just snap a mind memory of this - we'll remember it different." Maybe it's just us creatives, the meaning makers and metaphor miners--but there's also something about experiencing things alone. I have a weird relationship to the photos of an experience. It's deeper than the place and time, it's a record of who I was becoming and being shaped into. A milestone marker on the trail of life. When we lose people, it's like we've lost a partial personal historian who knew the trailheads and terrain. Photos can serve as the evidence that who we were was real--even if we were the only ones to see it. But ultimately, people have been living and leaving things forever without pictures--but that's why we learned language and painting and song and dance... as a way to weave experiences for those who weren't there to witness it.

Beth Bachtler's avatar

This this this. I want to read an entire book from you on this. Encapsulated the complexity of it perfectly.

Julie Glover's avatar

Thank you for sharing, Beth! I have pictures in my mind, through your words. Could it be that being truly present imbeds those images in your mind, rather than in your phone?

Hope Andrews's avatar

I love you. I loved this. Inspiring me always ✨✨