#startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful

Lara is often asked why she uses the hashtag #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful.

She started this project in mid-2015. In early 2013 she was diagnosed with MS and in mid-2013 she 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 her life. The job was a political hot potato in the town. The politics dated back decades before her time, but as the face of the Tourist Association, she 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.

In early 2015 she had had enough. She left the job in mid-2015 to freelance. She was a Jill of all trades - you name it she would do it to pay her mortgage. She started a blog, stopped her medication, sacked her neurologist & pursued a more wholistic form of therapy. Finally, she started a project called #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful. With this project, she promised herself that every day, she would get out of bed,

walk & she would find something beautiful.

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

Now she looks for something beautiful instinctively. This project has given her 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 her landscape photography. This project will be something she continues until the day she dies. 

Forever grateful for the fact that she can #startthedaywithsomethingbeautiful