Adrea: Strength Then and Now

For those of you not in the know by reading Jen's blog - her PET scan revealed her tumors are GONE gone Gone gone. She reflects here about where she is now and where she was then. I think that you can see her emotional journey in her face in our pictorial sessions.

And actually, while I was compiling these three pictures, I was surprised at what I see.

In the first picture I see an innocent sort of beauty and courage - she's going to face this cancer thing but she doesn't really know how - she's sort of giving off this bravery energy - I don't know how else to describe it - because she wasn't manic - she was still, serene, but not naive about the unknown.



In the second picture, she's right in the middle of the muck of it all. It's been bad, and there's this sense that it's going to be worse before it gets better. I see this one as the least present of all three - and that's not a criticism - and I don't even mean that she wasn't present in her self - it was just to me, or the camera. I think she couldn't dwell on where she was too long because the road just seemed daunting... I think she had to be focused inward. And if you'll remember - that shoot was stunning in it's own right too.




In the third, I expected to see her at her lowest. I expected the journey to have drained and exhausted her. I expected to have to work hard not to have her look sick and beat. What I saw, and what I am most surprised about in this comparison, is that she looks just plain best here. Don't you think? It's all of what she shares in her blog. It's the most JEN, the most present, the strongest and rivals the first in glowing beauty. Maybe because shes radiating that energy again - that "I am JEN. And I am going to win this." energy. Except in the first picture it's a whisper, all that nervous fear is static over it. And in the third, it's a command - the fear, the nerves, the misery is still there - but this time it's firmly under the thumb of the command, "I am JEN, I have been through that shadow, and I will not die there."


You haven't seen the last of her. For whatever reason, whether it was sitting in our dorm room so I could sketch her for my drawing classes or posing for pictures, Jen has always inspired something for me artistically - now we'll just focus more on cool locations and funky clothes rather than battling life and death.