Learning From a Mothers Love
The summer of 2021, I captured a series in my neighborhood of Hackensack, New Jersey titled The Porch Series. The series followed and shared the heart and the stories of those in my community. The people I see everyday on their porches or outside their homes. The immigrant families, the single moms, the lonely older woman reading away the newspaper every morning. Through my lens and their voice, I posed three questions: What is love to you? What is community to you? & How do you love your community?
“As water reflects ones face, so ones life reflects the heart.”
In capturing others’ truth, my own story expanded beyond the words and responses I heard. What started as a series for encouraging reflection for others, led to a mirror being held up before me. The quote by Maya Angelou comes to mind in which she says, “We are more alike, then we are unalike”. In this time, I got to feel, resonate, laugh, cry, sense and listen to people that I otherwise would have never known deeply. It drew out an intimacy as well as a reflection.
In that intimacy, I reaped an abundance of capturing transitions and shifts in the lives of my neighbors, to my own, to my community as a whole. From grief, to death, to revival and new seasons- a common thread was change. From the transition of old cultural businesses being knocked down and replaced with new apartment complexes to the unexpected death of my close friend and neighbor, Chris Carter who the series was done in memory of. To the change of myself- facing hard cold parts of my life and evolving step by step with my artistry, my essence and faith. It all weeped through the soul of this project and the many stories spoken. Especially in one great story of my beautiful neighbor Aja and her baby Liam.
Aja & Liam. A Mothers Love. Photographed by me. July 2021. Ariella Imena
Aja and her son Liam opened up the sky with a beauty and joy I have never seen as a mother and son. She had a touch that swept over him like a soothing river and his infectious smile made everything in the day feel still. Their love carried deep and it hugged me spiritually. It was soft, sweet and real.
Within asking Aja, “What is love to her?” I will never forget the warm story she shared with me. As a single mom, she told me how love before her baby was something she felt was physical and external but transitioning into motherhood, after the birth of her son, she saw how it was something found within her. “It starts within me. It is something that is patient and gentle.” She carried on to tell me about a time she had faced deep difficulty with her life and herself. While playing a lullaby for him one evening, the melody brought out her tears. She held him gently and close while he looked up and stared. In that moment she spoke to him softly, “Mommy is working on herself. It’s not you, it’s never you. I’m working on me because I never want to make you feel like it had anything to do with you”. In the same breath, he then moved his hand on top of her heart and rested his head down on her chest. Aja shared with me how she couldn’t believe it but in that moment she knew she was going to be okay. “God was telling me, I was okay”.
“God is saying, you are going to be okay.”
It is in stories like those that I see how a seed sown can carry out a harvest. Even when you are in the pits of a desert. Joy will always come in the morning. It is the change. It is hope that life, whether mine, yours or my neighbors will be filled with a spirit of renewed peace when you are still. Aja may never know how much I needed to hear that story that day. I remember sitting in my room silently and alone after and feeling affirmed by her words. As if God was speaking to me indirectly through her story. I knew I was going to be okay in all the changes of my life whether ugly or beautifully written. And for that reason, I smile.
