LIVE with HEART

I had the great pleasure to do my first Helping Hearts photography session in Squamish, B.C this month. Helping Hearts (www.helping-hearts.ca) is comprised of professional photographers from across Canada, providing free photography services to families with a child (under 16) who is suffering from a life altering illness and/or disability. The sun was shining for our session at Shannon Falls, which was inspired by Emilio Razanno who has been overcoming medical challenges since the day he was born.. His loving family of five consists of three boys; Marcus age 12, Emilio age 8, Evann 15months and their wonderful parents Pam and Enzo.

As an infant,Emilio was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and underwent three open-heart surgeries and countless trips to the hospital for treatment. His deafness was diagnosed when he was 18 months old and suffered moderate brain damage that resulted from a stroke that followed one of his early surgeries. He has epilepsy which causes spike and wave episodes in the brain. Emilio's Mother, Pam says he has many diagnoses and in spite of all of his challenges and hurdles Emilio continues to move forward not knowing any different in life. Marcus and Emilio are just amazing big brothers to their youngest brother Evann, with so much care and compassion their parents couldn't be more proud of them.

Emilio had a smile on his face the entire photography session. He had so much energy and love for life. You can tell that he doesn't take one day for granted. The scratches on his knees were proof of this! He was picking up logs, jumping off stairs, skipping rocks and constantly showing love and respect to his entire family.

Healthy or not, you never know when life can be taken away from you. A note to parents: every day is a blessing with our family, so tonight when you go to bed kiss your babies goodnight.

There is a poem Pam would like to share and when days get tough Mom always thinks of this: c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...... When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.