I’m on the phone with a client.

“The only thing I’m not sure about is being in pictures with my newborn.”

Honestly, this conversation is one I have with just about every client I book, but especially for newborn sessions. I smile gently and I beg these moms to get in the photo. I whisper how I know that the post-postpartum body is just different and new and hard.  I tell them that I use angles and poses that minimize that awkward and fragile season.  But mostly I tell them: relationship is what matters. Your child will want to see how much you loved them from the beginning.

I never have had a mom regret that I begged them to get into the picture.

So this week’s links are a series of great posts on why you should get in the picture, even when your hair is messed up or you’re 10 pounds overweight or you hate the way you smile.

Beauty

“We work so hard to be good role models to our daughters, and here we are-regularly-teaching them that our words mean nothing, that when push comes to shove, it is the outer beauty that is the most important.” 

When Your Mother Says She’s Fat

“Now I understand what it’s like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalizing these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is more cruel to us than we are to ourselves.”

The Mom Stays in the Picture

“I’m everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won’t be here — and I don’t know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now — but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.”