#startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful

I am often asked why I use the hashtag #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful.

I started this project in mid-2015. In early 2013 I was diagnosed with MS and in mid-2013 I started a job working for the local Tourist Association, managing the Visitors Centre. Both these things combined to create two of the most difficult years of my life. The job was a political hot potato in the town. The politics dated back decades before my time, but as the face of the Tourist Association, I was on the receiving end of toxic behaviour for 2 years. At the same time, I was struggling with a succession of soul-destroying Neurologists.

By mid 2015 I had had enough. I left the job to freelance. I was a Jill of all trades - you name it I would do it to pay my mortgage. I started a blog, stopped my medication, sacked my neurologist & pursued a more wholistic form of therapy. Finally, I started a project called #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful. With this project, I promised myself that every day, I would get out of bed, walk & I would find something beautiful.

This project changed and saved my life. It saw my photography transform from an interest into how I make a living. There were times when I struggled to get out of bed and find hope but looking for something beautiful, gave her purpose. When my sister died in 2017 this project kept me sane. I can remember vividly on the morning of Tiney's memorial leaving the house at dawn to find something beautiful. I truly believes if she had not had this purpose on that day and in those awful months following Tiney's death, I would have gone insane.

Now I look for something beautiful instinctively. This project has given me hope, a sense of purpose, and a fervent belief that there is more beauty in this world than bad, despite it all. This project forms the basis of all my landscape photography. This project will be something sI continue until the day I die.

Forever grateful for the fact that I can #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful