In recent years, our local beach community has seen several tragedies in the lives of our teenagers. We’ve had several suicides, accidents, and kids being bullied. It has been tough as a mom to three teenagers to watch other families suffer and to know that our children are hurting and are sometimes the ones doing the hurting.

I can recall one night when our oldest was in high school and her gasping at the notification of a “finsta” (fake instagram) account having posted a pic of her that they had taken from her account and tagged with a really nasty caption. I of course went through the roof and was so upset. But after the initial eye rolling and “Mom calm down” moments passed…she let it roll off her back meanwhile I was seething at the cruelty and recklessness that I had just witnessed at my own daughter’s expense on social media. We reported it to Instagram who quickly removed the account…but the way I saw it, the damage had been done. Thankfully, our sweet girl has a very thick skin…thanks in part to being a military kiddo who is resilient….but it bothered me for weeks. And to this day it still makes my blood boil when I think about it. How did we get so callous and hurtful?!?!

It has been weighing on my heart for a long time that we needed to highlight more good in our community. There are so many amazing kids, doing fantastic things….we just tend to see or complain about the bad stuff. I also wanted to give our kids some opportunities to see that there are great needs in our community and beyond that they could help with. And on the flip side of that, there are so many wonderful things being done for them in our community that they should take the opportunity to say thank you and show their appreciation for their teachers and our local EMS workers, just to name a few!!!

That’s when I decided that this year I would provide opportunities for my Senior Team to do good things!!!! We are leading a Kindness Campaign in our community!!!!

The Team chose a way to show Kindness each month and we are having a blast doing it!! Our first month, we collected school supplies for a local high school because high school teachers rarely get supplies donated for their classrooms…and we all know how much $$ teachers spend in their own classrooms. We are also volunteering at a local animal shelter, helping with fall festivals at local elementary schools, and even writing letters of gratitude to our families one month.

These are all simple ways to spread love and kindness and make a positive impact in the world!! If you are a Senior photographer and want to know how we created our campaign, I’ll be glad to help you and if you are a teen or parent of a teen and want some ideas for things you can do in your community…let me know!!! We’d love to help!!

HAVE COURAGE & BE KIND y’all!!!