My Year of Love

A photo journal of 2022

I’ve been thinking of 2022 as the worst year of my life. But while in the hospital earlier this week, without much to do but scroll through my camera roll, I realized that’s objectively not true. As I scanned the months, I saw that a lot had happened: a lot of moving through hard things, yes, but also a lot of healing and a lot of truly surprising, wonderful things.

If you were to look at my photos before my relapse, a large portion was related to work—either trips I took, or photos of me all dressed up for a conference, or snapshots of a wall covered in butcher paper with big plans. But what’s here in my camera roll shows me that work was not my priority this year. My priorities were to stay alive and to heal and to spend as much time as I could with my loved ones. It was a year of sickness, but more than that, it was my year of love.