365 Outtake Tuesday! — Misty Lyn Bergeron

Hello Friends! Some of you may know about my 365 Photo Project I'm doing this year where I'm taking at least one photo everyday with my DSLR, editing it, and posting the results at the end of each month. Well, it turns out that some days I take waaay more than one photo and I want to share some of the outtakes with you. So, every other Tuesday I will be posting a few!

Welcome to Outtake Tuesday!

This one features one of my favorite people on the planet - my Mom! I could seriously write a novel here, so I'm going to try to keep it concise. My mom has been on this planet for 66 years and I swear she has more energy than I do. She has had an incredibly tough couple of years. Just to give you an idea: I got in a really bad car accident at the end of 2015 and she was by my side for weeks, including sleeping on the floor next to me in the hospital and at rehab. She spent weeks at a time in another state in 2016, taking care of both her brother and sister, losing them both to cancer in the same year. When she got home, and while experiencing a grief I can't really comprehend, she found out she needed triple bypass heart surgery. The surgery happened last November. Following the surgery she had to figure out how to stop smoking after 40 years. She did that, too.

I tell you all of this because these outtakes you're seeing are just a snippet of what she is capable of just months after heart surgery. They were all taken in June during the weeks of a very tough move for my partner and I. She was there helping us all month and it really meant the world to us. Enjoy!

This photo was taken the day of the big move. She is sitting in the middle of the chaos in our new house, while the moving company guys brought the big stuff in. She spent the night to make sure I was ok.

This photo was taken a couple days after the move when we had to go back and clean the old apartment. It was 90 degrees outside. My mom did what is unquestionably the worst job when you move, washing the cupboards inside and out. I realized toward the end of the job that *I* should probably be doing that job, not her. I said that to her and she was like, "Yeah! Why am I doing this?!" Haha. She will probably hate this photo, but I love it so much.

A few days later she spent the whole day with us in East Lansing for Eli's White Coat Ceremony at MSU.

You can see on her face here that she doesn't want me taking her photo again. This is her taking a breather in the middle of an 8 hour day (!) in my new yard, helping me make it feel like home. The day before, she drove out and we went and got all the yard work tools we would need. She spent the night and the next morning she was out in the yard two hours before me. I made sure to work two hours after she stopped to make it even-steven! At the end of the day my house did feel a lot more like home.

I love all of these photos. I could go on and on about my mom and how she teaches me what courage, grace, acceptance, hard work, and unconditional love look like. I'll leave it at this: I do not know what I would do with out my mom. I love you, Mom!!

Thanks for spending some time with my outtakes! Many more to come!

Much love,

MLB