The ways family life is dreamy are punctuated by the ways it’s the most challenging thing we’ll ever do. (Written over a period of 45 min in a car with kids yelling in my ears, biting each other, and laughing after their screams scared other family passengers half to death.)

P.S. I’ve been waiting over a YEAR to throw this virtual confetti–brookebschultz.com is LIVE!

To celebrate, I’ve got a secret audio for you—6 hacks for skyrocketing your creativity (even if you’re super busy). Grab it here.

The Heartful Podcast, show notes, Love Soaked Retreat + Mastermind, and Love Soaked Family Photography online course all now have a legit online home.
I’m so pumped to be able to support your creativity in a deeper way with the podcast + goodies on the site.

Take a look and tell me what you think?
It’s a party waiting for you (just like your life, and your family, and all the love in your four walls every day, wink…couldn’t resist.)

And now the amazing Cori Kleckner + family at their favorite beach.

   
Hey if you live in southern California or you’re planning a trip out this way I’d love to be the witness of the incredible web of love you’re weaving in your family every day, day after day, with no one there to see. Message me for all the deets about family sessions + we’ll get you some daily reminders of how rich in beauty + love your life is, like a love letter from your highest self, to get you through the hard days. Full family session details here.

Your dreams aren’t too big.
They’re also not too small.
I used to turn my nose up at women who “only” wanted to be stay-at-home moms.
Then I envied them, thinking my life would be so much easier if I didn’t want to do five hundred things.
Now I’m just so much more content to walk my own path—twisty, turny, unpredictable, hard and take-your-breath-away exquisite, and to whole heartedly approve of all other mamas doing the same.

Am I good enough? Can I do this? Does this even matter?
The doubts that recycle for every artist are the same flavor.

As I’m talking to applicants for the love soaked retreat and mastermind I’m floored by the beauty of your dreams. In love with your potential. Enamored by the giving hearts you have, the desires to be there for your kids AND make photos that make you and your clients feel something deeper, and get paid. I just want you to consider one thing. Your ceiling can become your floor. When people talk about “leveling up” it’s like, what does that even meaaan? But when you challenge what you currently think is possible you open a window to the idea that maybe, just maybe you haven’t been dreaming big enough.

And if we want our kids to dream big dreams, it’s prob not the best for them to see us stuffing ours into a closet and saving them for “someday.” If we tell our kids, “you can do anything you want!”—they better see us doing it, full out, no apologies.

Sometimes the world-changer mover-shaker in me wants to shut down my needs–ever realize how needy we are as human beings? We need dinner and sleep and love and belonging and purpose and projects. Nothing needier than a tiny newborn baby to make you as a mother question, “do *I* reallly need to sleep/eat/etc?” But turns out it’s our neediness—the conglomeration of pesky vulnerabilities, desires, and chinks in our armor—that writes the very best love stories.

Yo yo yo if you want Brooke to photograph your family and you live in Southern California or you’re planning a trip here she’d love to chat with you! Drop her a line here + the human version of her will send you all the pricing + availability deets.

the love soaked retreat 2020! before the world went nuts!

boy do i feel lucky we were able to be together and make art like this before covid. it nourished all of us beyond what words can say and YES I realize how cheesy that sounds. the love soaked retreat + mastermind is my best offer yet. it is a completely transformative experience for your art and your business, starting with the 3 day retreat where we shoot 5 families in-home. There’s there’s one in 2021! April 14-17. 10 spots only, and just 3 spots left. Is one of em yours? Let’s find out on a 1:1 call together. Apply here, m’love.

what am i waiting for?
words have felt dry even though i’ve been creating like crazy–creating epic pb + j sandwiches, podcast episodes, diaper changes, contributing to creating happy kids, and kids who think i’m the worst. i’ve been frozen in my ‘public’ creation–letting perfect be the enemy of good in this area even though i’m on fire in others. if i’m being honest, i’ve wanted to quit more in the last month than i ever have. not because i don’t want to take pictures. not because i’m over it–i’m definitely still crazy in love with photography, and more convinced than ever of the magnitude of family photographs. so my wanting to quit has been mostly selfish, just a reflection of the adjustment of mental space now that there’s another human to take care of in the mix of my dreams, my dreams for my family, me, the world. the emotional bandwidth required to do everything i want to do is out of reach–and so my brain was like, dude, we should just quit everything.
 
but instead of quitting, or believing, this is all too much for me–i’m leaning into believing that this is just a transition. expansion is an uncomfortable change. no one talks about the pain of success–and here i am, living so many of my dreams, nursing my baby while i chase more dreams, supremely grateful for the opportunity to do it and still, uncomfortable, overwhelmed, but those words make it sound so negative. i can sit back and watch it with fascination and interest, like watching a balloon inflate. there’s tension there. and it’s beautiful.
 
somewhere along the way i internalized the idea that family should/could be only happy. only joyful and loving, and if you did it right that’s how it would be. but now i see the beauty in the tension. the struggle to inflate, grow, be yourself in the middle of a bunch of other people trying to be themselves too. we live a hundred lives in our minds and then collide with a hundred more inside these four walls. it’s not comfortable. but gosh it’s beautiful.

 
hey. if you’re in southern california or coming to visit i’d love to photograph your family! send me an email and i’ll send you all the pricing + details for fall family sessions.

the pandeeeemmmmiiiccc. quarantiiiine. it magnified everything, zoomed in and slowed down to a snail’s pace. i loved it, then hated it, then hated it more. then wrapped some acceptance + grace around it.

we moved here in january

(felt like cheating)

it was

Here’s the us that’s real, but only in small slices. it’s the Us i want to believe in, and it’s here–these photos are my way to prove it to myself.

I walk in silence

My feet swollen

Because I gave birth three days ago

And time is frozen but my hormones are not

Milk engorging me

The start of something else that just takes time

A body changing and finding its way home again

.

I’m alone in the sea

Showering beautiful moments alongside the slow moving pain

Coursing through a body in transition

Everything in free fall the days stretch long and wild in front of us

New frontiers we navigate wearily

Cy smiles that reflexive newborn grin

Heavy rag doll body breathing loud

I want to remember this forever

This particular flavor of heaven

Punctuated by moments of hell

Sore nipples

Cramps

Eyelids heavy as concrete

Heaven

Worth it

So beautiful you can’t look away

.

 

Another morning that feels like an extension of the night

Except for the lightening of the sky and the stirring of bodies

Not as little as yours

She called you a caboose baby and that surprised me

Four years apart isn’t that long

But they are so far apart from you

Making their own games, Legos everywhere

I wonder how you four will puzzle together

But know I don’t need to worry;

It was always meant to be this way.

.

Eyes heavy

Body still changing

It’s hard to look in the mirror, foreign

I practice saying, I love you no matter what to my reflection

Some days I feel more than others

You are three weeks earthside

I change my mind every hour

How I feel about it all

Loving you four the constant thread

Joy woven in the most unexpected places

How shiny Vienna’s hair is, soft while I run my fingers through it and we read poetry and I think,

Maybe all life is

Is a string of unremarkable moments

Waiting to be noticed

Loved to life with kind attention

The many faces of us

Swirl together, different eyes, skin colors, nose shapes shifting

We are one and I don’t understand that, really, but feel it viscerally

 

This is hard

And it’s meant to be.

This is hard

And it is worth it.

If I lusted after life and living as much as I do suffering

Where would I be

Can relish all the pain

But it’s the transformation I loathe and love

The possibility that haunts and taunts me

We are warriors in our own worlds

Spiking our swords choreographing fight sequences that replay again and again

And the truth is I’m just sleep deprived

But the drama is more fun

.

 

Does everything have to come with its own hell?

My concrete eyes want to know

When they can sleep again

My dress flutters with the artificial breeze created by the fan

I wonder how long we will live here

How long we can hold these smelly pipes

Stuffy air

I long for quiet

I realize how much silence and space I need to wander inside

It feels so good to be here with my baby boy

My body sustaining his

Writing and drinking in the quiet

The same quiet hours I despise from 2-5pm

And it’s funny

I know I’ll miss these days

But I don’t think I’ll miss long afternoons where none of us know what we’re supposed to be doing

The time fades and bleeds into itself

I am reminded of watercolor

But that connotes beauty

Of which there is a smear

But it’s colored by lust

For more more time

More minutes moments and hours

To melt into new me

Selfish, my mind throws up on me

And I can notice

But I can’t shut off Alexa

So what I really want is something uninterrupted

A vastness of space to explore

The chaos weighs on my body

My neck tight

Head that doesn’t want to hold itself anymore

..

I think of what I’ve given up to birth these four souls

It feels like everything

It makes me stop and cry

Because I feel like I don’t know how to even walk properly anymore

My body so unrecognizable to me

Tonight life feels so hard and simultaneously so easy to let go—we’re all going to be dead soon, stop taking it all so seriously

Take a chance and love

Here to access the soul that’s trying to get my attention

It taps on my shoulder by way of my pounding head

From so much crying

And yes—I’m fine

Because I’m a human, nothing wrong with that

I want to swallow the whole world

But no one’s got a throat big enough

Or a life long enough

Plod along in days

Small minutes laced with wonder I know I miss

While i chase grandeur

Visions that dance in my head

I want to know when I’ll be at peace with these two worlds

The grand and the mundane

They forever unravel me

I can’t reconcile them long enough to live in the overlap

Only to look through the windows

Obscured

Longing for the feeling

To seal it real

Broken bits shatter
then hold
your scars are their strength

The scars, wounds, weaknesses and failings will mold my kids into something beautiful.
the relentlessness of ‘perfect’ threatens that belief on the daily–i find myself thinking: if only i could be more, different, better–it would be so much better for them.

the impact of being an imperfect human raising other imperfect humans (especially when they seem perfect–kids plus mom goggles will do that to you) rubs me raw lots of days. it’s working out all your demons in the spotlight, trying to navigate them with grace while reminding yourself their jaws aren’t as terrifying and sharp as they seem.
walking into that fire every day is a sacred path. it takes so much courage, which we often forget because it doesn’t feel optional. we instead say, ‘i’m just a mom’. maybe i’ll rebrand myself as a fire walker 🙂

because the act of walking into that fire, embracing the truth of what is, guides them through the flames of their own internal landscape. and while it can’t be measured as well as grades or sports teams or achievements, the emotional intelligence we cultivate when we are willing to do the work first is the heart-gold we ultimately want in relationships, work, and that ever-elusive lovely sentiment of changing the world.

some beautiful words this mama sent: “I can just see it. These images are going to be the illustrations for the story Mila will tell one day of how she and her mom made it through together.”
if you’d like some images to illustrate your own beautiful story–you can take some on your phone. jkjkjk. because you know this is a completely different experience, not because of what camera i’m going to use but because of how you want to be seen: as the full on fire walker human raiser extraordinaire that you are. no ‘just a mom’ here. contact me here for all the pricing and availability info, m’friend.

I’m out of practice pulling words together
I’ve been trying to simply pull my days together
Thread together a morning routine
Basic safety and meals for the five of us
It is everything, and feels like nothing.

We’ve been on a rollercoaster, yeah?
With an experience so shared and so global it simultaneously feels more connecting and more isolating than anything I’ve ever experienced. Because I can share my rollercoaster, and it will ring true for some and hollow for others. Who am I to say what this experience is, definitively, for all of us? It’s never stopped me with motherhood, which is obviously so variable and individual, yet I do think universal. Maybe it just feels more pretentious in this time to say, THIS–this is what it is. Because the truth? All I can say is HERE. here it is. this is what it is for me. Lonely and freeing. Stripping everything to its basic, and missing the frivolous extras. Waves of fear crashing on shores of peace and deep knowing.

So the thing I come back to is family. Not because it’s the only constant; that’s for the lucky among us. But because it is a container that holds room wide enough for the rollercoaster to twist, turn, grind to a halt and dip back down again.

And if you feel like you haven’t created much of anything lately? Let me prove you wrong. 😉
When you comfort a loved one, in the way only you can, it might not seem special because it is natural, even automatic. But it is creative.
What more honorable and exquisite to create than love?
And creating love takes the most ingenuity of all, because it requires the whole of you. It requires showing up when you don’t feel like it, when you’re completely spent.
Every time you show up for love you create a world with more love in it.

(this series for The Hybrid Collective when we stuffed 20 photographers into this loving family’s kitchen in San Diego. what a treat!)

Do you live in southern california or are you making plans to visit? Wanna to have your family photographed by me? Contact me here and I’ll send over all the pricing, availability + details, m’love.

This morning in the shower Vienna and Gemma made up a chant with a dance that went like this: “yeah, yeah, we got this! Woo!” repeated no less than fifty times.
It felt profound. I laughed and fist pumped.
Then Gemma promptly bit Vienna teeth marks and all. aghhh.
…so it’s all temporary, the hard and the wonderful, the dull and the dazzling. Having life means we know death is part of the deal. So while we’re maybe collectively more uncertain than we’ve ever been, I’m hoping we can also hold space for the truth that uncertainty has always been baked into our experience of being alive and that’s always been the way it’s meant to be.

I don’t believe in bad days anymore.
Every day feels like a ride, cycling from amazing to mundane to terrible and back around.
Days are not one thing or one way the way that life is not one thing. It’s everything.
And so then at the end of my life, I don’t want to say, “I had a good life” but rather:
I had a human life. It was incredible, it was hard, it was fabulous and terrifying and the most important thing: I LIVED it.

(images from my beach shoot at Photo Native–huge thank you to them for having me + to our two model families!)

If you want family photos of you + your crew on the beach, I’d love to be your lady. I’m having a baby boy this June, but I’ll be photographing families starting in August so message me here and we’ll talk pricing, availability, all the details and get your family set up for some deliciously sandy, beachy love-fest capturing of how you are now. Want to see more family photos? Click here.

I’ve been honored to be part of Photo Native since its first year and this year the stars aligned for me to lead a shoot which was pure f-u-n. That’s the truest thing I can say since I’m in the same boat as every other photographer at the moment who misses shooting (anyone other than my kids) like crazy.

We had 12 photographers on the beach all trying out shooting in full sun at midday with two of the most beautiful and gracious families and there were just as many tears and wanderings as laughs and snuggles, so if you ever look at images as a mama and think, ‘family sessions with my family don’t/won’t look like that’–you just gotta know the 80/20 rule: we photographers take 80% of the pictures in 20% of the time.

Kids aren’t meant to ‘behave’ or ‘listen’ for an entire two hours.

Doesn’t happen.

It’s an exercise in patience and grace and presence for anyone to have a family photo session, I tell ya what. But to be willing to have that process on display for a gaggle of other photographers–it’s such a treat to watch, every time. I confess, partially because it gives me great pleasure to see other people’s kids being kids–going crazy, not being into it, experiencing all kinds of emotions. But the biggest treat is seeing parents handle it with grace and their own gorgeous flavor of creativity. Parenting is one of the most creative processes there is, and coupling that with making images is a wonder that won’t ever be lost on me.

A huge thank you to Photo Native for having me!
 

(a compilation/slice conglomeration of our lives for the past nine months or so, with a smattering of thoughts on motherhood and creating in and around and through and because of it.)

your creative work can come back to support you, give voice to new experiences out of the dust—
But only if you muster the courage to make it in the first place.

Living the life of your dreams doesn’t mean it’s not hard or painful.
It’s all of it—beautiful and ugly, wonderful and terrible, so hard and the easiest thing in the world.
But it’s always the life of my dreams, no question.

You’re in there
Somewhere
Just because it’s not easy to find
Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the look

We all sustain life—
Our own, someone else, little or big, for one sparkly AHA moment or tiny everythings spread across forever.
When you’re sure it doesn’t matter, you struggle to see your own ripple effect and want to flop into what’s-the-point:
Zoom in. The littlest points of intersection set off invisible chains of events.
Every effort matters—not always for some tangible result but for the mountains of love, character and growth we build not grandly, but in the beautiful vast quiet.

It’s not always perfect, but sometimes it is—
Like some days I wanna say, listen, I’m here and it’s hard. Impossible even.
But most of the time there’s this incredible beauty that’s so pungent and overpowering it feels impossible to miss and ridiculous not to bask in, gratitude that’s ours for the holding as soon as we turn our minds to it.
We have so many days ahead—
Or we don’t.
It’s not always amazing, but sometimes it really, really is.

I always come back to the ways we orbit around each other, bumping up against pieces of ourselves, all mirrors.

The paradoxes have been surfacing again
All the boxes I’ve built for myself longing to be busted
And I wonder where I am in all of it
Holding, releasing, taking on identifiers and shedding them
I am the one watching me decide about me
…
The schedule of family life has crunched me big, squashed me flat and filleted me lately. The familiar feeling of wanting to upend it all, the scratching at the corners that threatens to peel down the walls—I’m only slightly more mature in my handling of it.
The thing I always come back to—the response that doesn’t make me turn on myself—is the making. In creation we get to be new every single time, and even though the strongest pull is to repeat the past, reinvention is always an option.
Did ya hear that? Even if you don’t run away to Europe, even if it’s just art you escape to for a few minutes or hours, reinvention is always an option.

How much possibility I hold in these arms
From the belly that birthed you
Knew you then but has to get reacquainted now
We are both constantly changing
Surging toward the sun
Growth
And maybe my most sacred job is simply to lift your chin
to the light