It might be cold, but we’re headed toward spring!

I know we’re still in the colder months, but spring is coming! And spring means a lot of things. It’s about new growth, it’s about change – and if we wanna get historical for a minute, it’s about celebrating getting through the winter season. And oh what a winter season Minneapolis has had this year… I don’t talk a lot about politics here, but you’ve probably seen some of my content elsewhere (like Instagram and Facebook) about initiatives I’ve been supporting in our community. Because as you’re surely super aware, things are not normal right now.

But even while things don’t feel normal (because they’re not), we keep going, we keep supporting eachother, and we keep accomplishing the goals we’d set out to achieve. Including, completing high school. Because we have to. Life HAS to go on.

In just a few short months, it’ll be graduation time

With everything currently going on in Minneapolis and in our country at large, it might feel like small potatoes to celebrate something like graduation. Current news is deafening, around every corner is another “something” to keep up with. And feeling overwhelmed by all of that, whether you’re a young person, or you’re the parent of a young person, is a LOT. It’s a lot for me, as a mom of two.

But it’s only a few short months before graduation will hit for Minneapolis seniors, and it would be easy for it to feel like celebrating that milestone can just… melt into the background right now. Or even to feel like it SHOULD be in the background, because looking around, should we really be celebrating right now? And are senior pictures really worth it, if you missed the opportunity to put them in the year book this past fall anyway? I mean… what’s the point, right? 

It might even give you a tiny bit of guilt, thinking about celebrating something like a graduation while our community is in the position it’s in. And that’s a normal way to feel.

Celebration is powerful

If you DO feel that way – like celebrating a graduation is something to feel guilty about, or something you shouldn’t be doing – here’s what I want to tell you. Celebration? It’s resistance. It’s community. There are a million ways that Minneapolis locals have been supporting eachother these last months, I couldn’t list them all if I tried. But celebrating wins, and growth, and movement, and milestones… it’s not just about the year book. And it’s not even about being able to look back at them in ten years’ time and say, “man, the world was wild when I graduated.” Obviously those factors are great too, I don’t want to take away from them. But right now, there’s even more going on.

It’s about power. Joy is power. Celebration is power. And when the world is chaos, anchors like family, and celebration are even more important than they are when the world is calm.

Senior pictures are a statement

Celebrating a graduation by marking the occasion, and documenting you were here, and that you DID IT – right now? It’s more than just a few photos, and it’s more than something you can submit to the year book. They’re a statement. You’ve achieved SO MUCH (or your kiddo has), despite everything going on around us on a daily basis. You have kept going. You never gave up, even though there definitely might’ve been moments where that felt easier.

But you did it. And years from now, you’ll be able to look back at snapshots of you – who you are, what you love, and what you’ve accomplished – and remember that you got through all of this. It might sound like a melodramatic way to talk about something as frivolous as senior pictures, but that doesn’t make it less true. Getting through high school is hard enough on its own, without the changes (to put it very lightly) that have been going on around us each day. This is a very… different… year to be graduating in, especially here in Minneapolis. But that doesn’t mean celebrating is less important – it actually makes it INFINITELY more important.

Still need to book Minneapolis senior pictures?

So if you still need to book senior pictures for your teen who’s graduating this year, let’s talk. I would be absolutely honored to put together a session that captures everything they love, and puts a timestamp on this accomplishment. Because just like the kiddos who graduated during the pandemic what feels like eons ago now, this is an unprecedented time to be going through the milestones we reach in our young lives. And reaching them despite everything? It’s not only worth celebrating, it’s worth remembering.