the city.

For Thanksgiving, my family and I typically journey to the Mississippi Delta, which is where my father grew up and where many of his immediate relatives still remain. Last year, though, my mom celebrated a big birthday - 60! - and she wanted to have a proper birthday bash during a week that she knew both of her college-aged daughters could make it home. Instead of traveling to the Delta, I packed my bags the Sunday before Thanksgiving and drove the six boring - but easy - hours to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, my home.

We were going to go to New Orleans for my mom’s birthday, something I found out right before I left for the Coast. As seasoned citizens of Hancock County, Mississippi, which borders St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana and is approximately a 45-minute drive to New Orleans, my family and I had been taking trips to the city my entire life. New Orleans is a cultural mecca with such a vibrant history that can still be seen today through its food, buildings, music, transportation, and people. If you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know that there’s something addictive about the lively jazz bands playing on the streets of the French Quarter, the bright red cable cars bustling visitors and locals across the city, the architecturally-stunning homes lining St. Charles Avenue, and - of course - the rich smells of gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée, and red beans and rice cooking in restaurants from Chalmette to Metairie. New Orleans locals are always ready to lend a helping hand - they are kind-hearted folks who have a deep understanding of their home city and will try to protect and defend it against anything.

In November 2005, my family and I traveled to New York City for my mom’s job. We were watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in-person - which was super awesome to see - and my dad started chatting to a local man standing next to us. Eventually, the man asked where we were from; whenever we travel to big cities, my dad will usually answer that question with “New Orleans” since few people know where Diamondhead, Mississippi is. When my dad told the man that we were from New Orleans - I remember this clear as day - the man said, “Oh, okay, nice!”

Then, the look of realization washed over his face, and he said, “Oh…wait.”

It’s difficult to talk about New Orleans without mentioning Hurricane Katrina, a devastating Category 3 hurricane that completely destroyed the city in August 2005. I remember Hurricane Katrina quite well - the storm made landfall about 10 minutes from my home on the Coast, so we were among the thousands of people placed under a mandatory evacuation. My hometown as well as the entire Coast experienced flooding, but it was nothing compared to what happened to New Orleans - due to a faulty levee, the city was completely swallowed by water, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more from their homes. Economically, it was a nightmare situation - businesses were ruined and shut down for good, and it took years for New Orleans to get to a place of stability. Even today, the city is still recovering from the effects of Katrina nearly 20 years after she made her landfall in the area. It has been only recently - literally within the past two years - that the Coast has gotten to a point that’s even comparable to pre-Katrina times.

Resilience is a common trait among native New Orleanians and Mississippi Gulf Coasters. Going through a life-changing event brings people together in an inspirational way. Both New Orleans and Gulf Coast citizens aided in humanitarian and medical efforts, even though they were the victims of the crisis at hand. They rebuilt homes, restaurants, and stores; they made sure neighbors had food and water; they took care of displaced strangers as if these people were their own family. I was a little girl, but I remember feeling a huge sense of pride seeing New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents - my people - step up to the challenge of rebuilding their lives, ready to face whatever obstacles laid in the way, and ready to do it with the help of neighbors, friends, and family.

To me, this is home. Home is more than a tangible location - it’s a feeling you get, an experience that you remember and all of the emotions that come with remembering that experience. I see home - I feel home - every time I go to the water on the Coast and every time the skyline of New Orleans pops into view when crossing over the bridge into the city.

All images in the post shot with Canon Rebel T6 and edited with Adobe Photoshop Express. 

change.

“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional .” - John C. Maxwell

Last month, I graduated college. To commemorate the occasion, I convinced my boyfriend (a fellow 2024 graduate) to take a few graduation photos with me - this was a great accomplishment in its own right given that the man would prefer to do anything else than pose for a picture. My little sister offered to take the pictures with my camera, which relieved the massive burden of me lugging around my tripod bag the entire shoot, a plight faced by many photographers when their shoot subjects include themselves.

It was an early May evening, and it was cloudy - the only cloudy day that week, of course. Mississippi weather always involves a high humidity percentage, but that evening, the humid haze was especially thick and coated everything that was dumb enough to be outside in a hot, sticky overlay. It was the type of humidity that you could smell. It created a lovely layer of frizz on my hair, melted my makeup, and - most unfortunately - fogged up the camera lens. This was something my sister didn’t seem to notice as she snapped each photo, evidenced by the slightly hazy appearance of some of the pictures from the shoot. I actually ended up liking the effect, though, and leaned into it as I edited these pictures. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I thought the change was good.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about change. There are certain milestones that can define a person’s life, and I believe one of those milestones is graduating college. For the past four years, I’ve lived in the comfort of routine - I knew I was going to school on the weekdays; I knew I had a place to stay in Oxford; I knew I could rest on Thanksgiving, winter, spring, and summer breaks; and I knew that, despite many details that varied throughout the weeks, there were some details that would always remain the same. It’s so easy to become attached to the constants in your life, and it’s even easier to allow yourself to become reliant on the unchanging nature of those constants.

Change is as terrifying as it is inevitable. According to many songs, books, and movies about lost loves and past lives, nothing stays the same, and nothing lasts forever. A large part of the human experience is facing change, so why is it so scary if we know it’s coming?

I don’t think people fear the actual act of change as much as they fear the unknownness that accompanies change. Personally, I am excited about the next phase of my life, but I have absolutely no idea what that next phase will look like yet, and that’s what scares me.

Taking life day by day helps. Appreciating the daily mundane experiences, like going to the grocery store or cleaning my room, helps me to realize that, even though my old routine is a thing of the past, there are some activities that I’ll probably always do for the rest of my life, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It makes me realize, similar to the graduation photo situation from above, that change is often good. I hope that I - and all the other new grads out there - can look back on this season of uncertainty knowing that we grew into a new version of ourselves, a version that embraces change and truly understands that change can lead to amazing things.

All images in this post shot with Canon Rebel T6 and edited with Adobe Photoshop Express