Welcome to Picture Love Friends. I'm your host, Kris LeDonne, and I wanna talk to you today on both sides of picture love. I wanna talk to you about picturing love, doing something to deliver some self care so that we can show up as the best versions of ourselves. And we're actually gonna talk about photos today, where my business started with. You know, helping people live their happiest version of themselves with photos in support of that. I am revisiting and re-imagining my most popular episode, which is what to do with school photos. A dilemma that many loved ones have when they have children or their own personal photos, and. Maybe they're not the best photographs that have ever been taken of those people, but they have some value that's keeping you from throwing them away, and we're gonna reimagine that. I'm gonna give you some other maybe more meaningful ways to go deeper with those pictures or decide you've gone deeper and you don't need them anymore. You can release them. And we're also going to serve some hearts. We're gonna address the worry that naturally happens in humans. Whether you are a parent or not does not matter, but worry is worry. Worry has many faces. So whether you are worrying about school photos or not, you can take the exercise we're gonna open up with today to help soothe the worrier that can show its face and not shut them up, not bat them down. This is not whack-a-mole. Is taking care of our human heart so that we can show up as the best version of ourselves for ourselves and those we love. So before we begin anything, I want to share the intention that I have set for this. My intention is that when you listen to this, the nervous system feels a measure calmer, your heart feels a measure lighter, and anything that might show its face today or tonight while you're listening to this, that might prompt a worry response. My intention is that this exercise helps you and me look at something objectively with curiosity, give it the compassion that we need without triggering a worry response. So I put on some nice babbling brook and birds chirping in the background because I love being around water. And if you do too, you can visualize this with me. So we're just gonna take a couple quick breaths. Settle down a little bit, and if that intention isn't your perfect size, then you can choose one that suits you best. If you are not driving, I invite you to please put your feet flat on a floor or a surface where you can feel support. And if you can sit down or lie down for a few minutes, great. That's beautiful too. But first of all, take a nice, deep, beautiful breath. If you are comfortable, you may let your eyes softly close as you exhale, or you can just let them soften. Maybe look down at something that you can just let your eyes softly lose focus if you're driving, stay focused on the road or put a pin in this and come back later. As you inhale, I want you to imagine your lungs filling up with the freshest, cleanest, most soothing air you can imagine. For me, that's under trees, near water, and you're filling up with gratitude and ease, and every breath out is, is a let a release. You're letting go. You're letting go of tension. You are letting go of worry. You're letting go of something that might cause dise in your body and continue to take a nice deep breath. And then imagine as you're exhaling, your stress levels just continue to go down, like, like a visual thermometer. When you're overheated, the stress levels are high, and as you relax and you exhale. Your head is relaxing. Your face is relaxing. Your jaw is relaxed. Your shoulders start to remember where they're meant to be. They don't need to be up by the ears. They can be just fine and be safe down where they belong. Your arms can relax. Are your hands clenched? Can they let go? Maybe wiggle your fingers a little bit and keep breathing in with the fresh air that feels so good to you and the perfect temperature for you. And as you exhale more that that visual of the thermometer, the red is going down, down, down, and it doesn't get freezing. It gets more and more comfortable as that mercury thermometer looks lower and lower, less red. The back is starting to relax. Release. It feels loose like it's meant to, that spinal fluid can flow just like your beautiful, refreshing breath. The hips which hold lots of tension and memories start to relax and they feel more comfortable sitting, standing, or lying. Maybe you even notice your pulse going through gently through your body. With gratitude, you're filling up with more fresh air, and as you exhale, you just feel all of the last remaining bits of tension going down through your legs, leaving your hips, leaving your knees, leaving your calves, leaving your ankles and feet and toes, and going into Mother Earth, and she is there to receive it, transmute it, support you, and let you breathe with ease. Worry is just a concept. It is not something that lives within you right now. One last deep relaxing breath. I hope that feels as good for you as it does for me. I literally clenched my stomach when I am tense and I'm noticing the belly's hanging loose and it feels much more relaxed and I feel safer now. I hope you do too. So the worriers, whether you hold that worry in your body or it clouds your thoughts, or maybe you're like me and you don't like seeing clutter surrounding you in your space, that to me causes worry. I wait for a pet to jump up. I wait for somebody to come in and plop down at a bag. I wait for something to spill, and that clutter just causes dis disease for me. So we decluttered our bodies just now with the, the worry energy and there's concerns about photos. So we're gonna use that, as the subject of focus right now and remove some worry about keeping or letting go. I'm gonna give you a concept that maybe you haven't tried before. And the journalers will love this, but if you're not much into writing, this is for you too. Please don't write it off, pun intended just yet. So imagine with me, you gather all of the school pictures, the portraits that may or may not have been a good hair day, may or may not have survived water stains. Maybe the adolescent skin wasn't as glowy and dewy as one might like. Maybe it's crazy hair. Maybe it's a style whatever it is, it's perfect for what it's, and I wanna offer you that thought that looking back, measuring back is not staying in the past. It's allowing us to measure, look how far we've come, look how far they've come. I have a new college graduate now, and when I look back, I saw a picture four years ago of when my daughter committed to the college that they just graduated from, and it seems like a minute ago, and yet a lifetime ago at the same time. And the response I got in the text was, Ew. But to me it was like, oh, so. Measuring back is a beautiful thing. Not to stay there, but to see how far we've come. And if you could, if, if gathering school portraits is not your issue, but this relates to maybe a parallel topic, go with me. But what I love to do is know what I'm dealing with. So by gathering them all in one place, whether it is a pile on a, on a table. Or a folder in a computer or maybe on your phone. It's really important to put everything in one place where it can be seen. Maybe you had them all scanned, so they're all digital. Putting them all in one folder so you can open them up and see them all in one view is going to really expedite this process. And then what I would recommend. Because when we look at school portraits, there's definitely a chronology. It's very clear when it's a preschool picture or a elementary school picture, or a middle school or high school or junior high, whatever terms you're talking about. Even college pictures. What I would recommend you do is put them in somewhat of a sequence. It doesn't have to be exact. Please don't get stuck. If you cannot find a third grade photo that is irrelevant here. It's a matter of working with what we have. And there are no picture police that are going to come and arrest you or ticket you for missing one year. And who knows? You might get this project in progress and then find it, as you go on, and that's fine. You can add it in when you do find it. But start by gathering and putting'em in one place. Get it in a in a sequence, and then notice what are the doubles. I know that lots of organizations will sometimes give you multiple poses. You can keep them all okay, but one copy of each is plenty For this. Do not feel bad about discarding the sheet of little tiny thumbnail size photos. You can toss them if you have a larger one, if you're gonna scan'em, don't scan the tiniest ones, scan the bigger ones, so you just get a better quality file. Anyway, moving on. Once you do that, consider the concept of a flip book or a journal, and one photo can represent an entire year in a student's life. So just to start at the beginning, I'll say preschool and maybe you don't even have preschool, but just go with me on the concept and answering a simple little question, whether it's in a reflection or if you're going to write it as a caption in a flip book, or put it in a scrapbook or put it in a digital book where you can make the lettering as big as you want. Choosing your font on a page. That's great. You can ask a simple question like. What did they, what did they call themselves back there? I know lots of little kids like to have nicknames. What were they into? Did they always wear mismatched socks? Were they into a certain television show? Was there a favorite book? Something that you might consider time capsule and something that they were known for. Sometimes little kids' speech is so much fun. They invent new words or new pronunciations for words. It is really fun to do that. Or a family quote or, or maybe a lifelong nickname that they got in preschool. Those are fun little things that you can actually jot down and to journal. It does not matter. About spelling. Yeah, please spell names right. But everything else, it's not about the spelling, it's about the intention. The honoring, the measuring back, the reflecting on the love and making somebody feel loved. And if you're doing it from a memorial part point of view, somebody who's no longer physically with you, write down something from your perspective that make, that reflects your love for them, what you appreciate about them the most. What made them light up with joy that year? What made them light you up with joy that year? If it's for you, not somebody else. Kindergarten. What did they discover about the world or themselves that year? Maybe they discovered a sport. Maybe they discovered, their ability to, to draw. Maybe they discovered they like to tumble. You know, there's so many little things that. We forget until we sit down and that picture can take us right back. And if it's somebody who didn't enter your life until later on, like for example, you know, blended families, maybe you have a Brady Bunch, maybe this child wasn't yours until later on. It's a beautiful opportunity to, to ask him a question and say, Hey, do you remember this picture? Or Do you remember who your best friend was in first grade? Or do you remember the first time you rode a bus? Or do you remember the walk to school? Or do you remember your first grade teacher? Things like that are really fun ways of helping blended families connect the dots. If you don't have memories back then, now I have so many ideas for you, but what I decided to do is empower somebody listening who feels inspired to do something With these portraits, you can make a very simple little flip book or scrapbook or design it on the computer and print it. Then you can get rid of the extra copies of the photos because then you know you did something with it. And anything else is just excess. Maybe there's another parent or another family member who would like those extra copies or maybe everybody would appreciate being tidy and just seeing the finished product. Just a thought. So whatever aligns for you is the way to go. Okay. Now what I did was I compiled ideas from preschool through 12th grade and a bonus section of some ideas or journal prompts for somebody who, maybe you have some college memories, maybe these are yours. Maybe they didn't go to college, maybe they went to a trade school, or maybe they went right out into the, into the world, and you just have that post-graduation or post GED photo that. It stands for something, or maybe there's a picture of that first job because when they were finished with their school days, whether there was a graduation or not, there was that moment out in the real world, and it could have simply been they bought their first car, got their first job. Whatever it is to you,these are milestones, and I like to think of it as basically. Maybe not leaving the nest, but being able to fly so that's the scope that I wanna recommend. And if you wanna pare it down and just focus on high school, you can do that. If you have anything extra that you wanna put in there, like the sports portraits or things like that, or maybe the expired learners permit, that's fine to tuck it in. Don't let the project get so big you can't finish it. We wanna set you up for success, so just focus on the school portrait so you can get rid of the excess and you can have something completed. And then if you decide to add in other content, I recommend coming back and adding that in after you have completed that first initiative, which is what to do with those school portraits. I almost forgot to mention I created a tool for you with all of the prompts and all the bonus questions in a nice, easy, downloadable, printable structure. So make sure if this resonates with you and you want those shortcuts, make sure you go to the show notes of this episode of Picture Love podcast and you can download it for free. My gift to you, no strings attached. But of course, I'd always love to hear. How you used it and how it served you, and if you have any inspiration on other ways, I can support you. And you're picturing love, whether it's through photos or not. I hope that that brings your worrier" A little extra peace today, and I hope that gives the overwhelm some clarity too. And I would love to know how you are using this concept, or if you had an idea that was birthed from hearing this inspiration today. But regardless, come back. Listen to this grounding exercise as many times as helps you and make sure you share it with a friend because if we're picturing love, maybe they need to do the same thing too. All right. That's it for today. Thank you so much for being here, and I will catch you next time on Picture Love.