On May 28th, 2018, I was sitting in my new home (I had just moved from upstate New York to a place on the east coast) and was wondering what to do next. It had been three months since my husband had died and I was still in shock. I went through a years worth of photographs (over 6,000) and chose 260 images that captured some great moments.

I planned on putting together an album for myself that I could view when I needed help remembering the good stuff. I realized that words would be helpful, too. I also realized that I wanted to publish the album so that people could consume a good story.

I couldn’t caption every photograph on my own because there was just too much to say and I didn’t want everything to be lopsided. I reached out to some friends to ask if they would be willing to contribute some words to accompany my photographs. Everybody said yes. I “assigned” photographs to people. I didn’t set any rules. The captions could be as short or as long as the individual wanted and nobody knew who else was contributing (no competitions). All I asked for was honesty.

While waiting for people to return their captions to me, I wrote a few long pieces for certain months (chapters) of the book. I explored a lot and went outside of my comfort zone. I wrote things, was glad when I thought they were out of my system, then a few days later I’d have a breakdown of sorts. I’d gather myself after a couple of days and do it all over again. My good friend, Martin Olson, read every bit that I wrote and helped me to better express myself and fix typos.

I started receiving photo captions from people and my heart soared. The notification sound of an incoming email from my “VIP” list made me so excited. I began piecing everything together and was stunned by how well everybody’s words flowed together without anybody knowing who was writing or what was being written.

By the middle of August, I had everybody’s captions. I had created a rough layout and was ready to make everything fin