The most emotionally difficult years of my life were the ones immediately following the finalization of a divorce from a marriage that had lasted twenty-five years.

No one asked how I felt or how I was getting along. I was simply empty, so uncertain as to how to proceed, humiliated, emasculated as a woman, and struggling to regain my femininity, my confidence in my body, my sexuality, and my desire to be beautiful and love myself.

These photos were taken with a small digital camera which was given to me by a very young photographer with whom I had an affair when I was suddenly alone and scared. We had split up by the time I took these photographs. They were taken over a period of time within one year. They manifest my intention to express pain, fear, and grief.

I changed them from color to black and white to eliminate the horrible decisions I made when originally adjusting them on my computer. I did not know what I was doing using the program I had at the time.

As I write these words, seventeen years later, I am still healing from all the separations from my husband, my son, and the family life which I carried on for a long time. But I have moved into a settlement with acceptance of how I am right now. And now. And now.