How scrapbooking has changed my life

By:Debra M.

When I started scrapbooking a little over a year ago, I never thought I would reap all the rewards that have come my way. I just thought it was a neat way to organize and preserve my photos. I have since learned that it is so much more.

I have been blessed with the most amazing times with my daughter, Jennifer, and my mother.

My daughter is 14 and is the typical teenager. We are at that age were she is stretching her wings and nothing mom likes can be cool. Scrapbooking together has brought us closer. When I was organizing the 15 years of photos from pregnancy to now, she became very interested. We would spend hours looking through photographs and me telling her all the stories that went with them. I found that she loved hearing all about it and I enjoyed telling her. I gave her a gift of her very own scrapbooking materials and she loves to "crop" with me and my friends. When it is just she and I cropping, we have discussed so many things I feel I would have missed otherwise. She has become more open with me and I feel like we will definitely make it through these teenage years.

My mother and I have a very tumultuous relationship. However, we have spent some very meaningful moments together going through photos. I listen to all her stories and see my mother in a different light. I see the vivacious, beautiful woman she was when she married my father. I see the love that she had for her children. I feel her pain at the loss of her baby son and my brother. We have cried over many memories of him. This brought us closer and gives us time where we are truly comfortable with each other. We are organizing photos to do an album on my brother. Although it has been 11 years since he died, this process has helped us grow closer together and has helped heal wounds that I was not sure we could heal.

I am so thankful a dear friend invited me to a CM class a year and a half ago, for I would have missed out on so much with my family had she not.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Scrapbooking, More than a Hobby, by Maria