In November 2011, a woman in my community, Lucia Maya, called me a few weeks before I was due to give birth to see if I would photograph her young daughter who was undergoing chemotherapy. I was so honored to shoot Elizabeth Blue yet struggled to summon my tired and heavy pregnant body to get to the studio to document such a vulnerable, exquisitely beautiful and painful moment in one family’s lives...

(To read & imagine Elizabeth’s own voice, read her poem at the bottom of this post)

My own pregnancy was taking everything I had, and until I gave birth, I realized I had to take a hiatus from my work. What many people may not know is that each and every shoot I do with women requires an enormous amount of my physical and emotional reserves. Often, after I am done with a shoot, and joyously have listened and immersed myself in a women’s story, I have to sit alone, in quiet, to absorb, digest, reflect, even before beginning the editing process. I realized I might only have had that one chance to photograph Elizabeth, and that that opportunity might have passed me by.

But a month or so after I gave birth in February of 2012, I reached out to Lucia Maya to check how they were doing and to see if I could have a second chance? And sometimes in life, we are blessed to get such second chances! Lucia Maya didn’t hesitate to say yes and we made a date to make beauty on April 13th 2012. ”Elizabeth Blue had finished her chemo and was doing very well,” she informed me!

When we took these photos we were celebrating. She was free from cancer, life was luminous in her spirit, in her skin, in her breath. She was humble yet confidant when she stepped onto my white paper backdrop, an amazing feat considering what she had gone through. She made it effortless for me to photograph her. She made me cry; I had never seen such beauty through my lens. I told her it was the first time in my life that I felt like a hip New York City photographer photographing a high style Fashion Model. I felt proud to document this gorgeous moment. I admired her.

Only 5 months later, however, I learned of Elizabeth Blue’s departure on September 23rd 2012 at a much too young 22 years old. I cried while holding my 7 month old son in disbelief that her beauty in physical form was no more. Instantly, in that moment, I realized I could not imagine outliving my own son. Questions swirled in my heart wondering what Lucia Maya was experiencing, feeling, after watching, assisting, and caring for her daughter as she transitioned on. Can our minds even begin to comprehend or explore this possibility without actually having gone through it? The very inkling of an idea of Sequoia dying so young feels like a vice on my heart. How does one heal?

Ever since, Lucia Maya had not shared many of the photos we took on that blessed day in April. And then recently she changed course, and asked if I would share some of Elizabeth Blue’s photos and poetry on this new media platform my husband and I have created called A Beautiful Body Project? She explained that she felt Elizabeth Blue was asking her to share her photos, her story, her words, to inspire beauty in others. With new eyes, I revisited that gallery of photos and took my sweet time culling through them, trying to open my heart to be guided by what Elizabeth Blue might have want to offer all of you.

As this post in memory of this inspiring soul-who-is-no-longer-with-us has come to life, I have been reflecting on the power of photography in a new way: In the days following the shoot, these images captured her in remission, yet the reality was, her time, in that moment, was actually very limited. I realize now, every time I photograph a woman, it may be the first, last, and only time she steps in front of my lens and it has deepened further my commitment to you. Those very same images have stories that rewrote themselves in the days, weeks, and months since. Such is the life of photographs, I understand more clearly than ever now.

Although this is a story of loss, it’s actually much more about life! About BEAUTY! About feeling irreplaceable and self-confident in one’s own gorgeous skin, just as we are right now. It’s about sharing our vulnerability so that we may truly feel the gift of being alive and being of service to one another. This story is confirmation that beauty is everywhere, if we only look with our authentic eyes. These photos beg you to love yourself so that you may celebrate life in all it’s embodiments. When I look at these images, I see in her confident eyes a profound, unexplainable knowledge that life is more precious than most of us truly know. I find myself “drunk”, gazing at Elizabeth Blue’s soft hair on her perfectly round head because I cannot think of anything more beautiful. I find myself bathed in gratitude that I had the honor to be the record keeper of this particular, irreplaceably beautiful moment. -Jade

Elizabeth Blue is a gifted poet, beginning writing wisdom-filled poetry at only 9 years old. Here is a piece she wrote when she was 14 years old:

A Lifetime

I want,
To quote Rumi.
I want to say one thousand words of thanks.
I want
To throw
One million rose petals in the air.
I want
To kiss the sky.
I want God to know that I am grateful
I want to be humbled by the sheer knowledge of what is.
I want to blow into one million pieces, and dedicate myself to the world.
I want to say thank you,
And mean it.
I want to tell the world,
The universe,
That my Indian lover is
The sky
The moon
And the sea.
I want you to know that beauty is everlasting,
And that I am only a temporary placement of outer beauty.
I want you to know that the beauty inside me is everlasting.
And I want you to know that I did not create this.
And,
I created some.
I want you to know that eternity is forever, and then more.
I want you to know that ‘me’ is just a figure of speech.
I want you to know that I love you.
And that life,
Today,
Was one of those days worth living.

©Elizabeth Blue

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If this piece on my journey with Elizabeth Blue touched you, please consider pre-ordering Volume 1: Mothers and/or becoming a member. That is how I keep this platform free for millions around the world to help them heal. (See links at the top of this page)

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Thank you,

-Jade (Founder :: A Beautiful Body Project)