How to be Yourself in Photos, Part 1

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

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The following podcast is provided by an approved senior care provider on the answers for elders radio network, and welcome everyone to answer for older’s radio, and we are here with a very special hour on this weekend. And the reason why it’s a very special hour is because I get to share this hour with somebody that I went to Anacortis high school with, and her name is Dana Chrysler. And Dana, welcome to the show. Welcome to answers for elders radio. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. Well, Dan, I’m excited you’re here because not too oft when I get to share my my world, you know, and where I am with people. Of You’re part of my roots and part of my childhood and we grew up together and had so many similar experiences and I know that you and I were both very involved in the music area. You were more in band, though, weren’t you? I think, more so, and I was. I was the choir girl, and but we did a lot of things. I know that kind of in the fringes together. And and certainly I lives have gone in different directions and and and it’s interesting because now you’re here on the show and and we’ve been friends for a while on facebook. And I have to tell our listeners why Dana is here, because I got very, very, very very excited when she made a comment about people over the age of fifty or you know, they they have a tendency to stay away from the camera and you’ve become this incredible portrait photographer and I am telling you, I’m so blown away by your work and am and we’re going to talk a little bit about something very different that we haven’t talked about in that is photography. It’s going to be about being your authentic self in front of a camera and it’s hard, as that used for a lot of people. Some of us are, you know, sometimes get challenged by it or a little bit different, you know, concerned, and so obviously, NA welcome to the show. Is I’ve been rambling on. So thank you. So tell us a little bit about you and where you’ve been with your life, it since high school, in a in a nutshell, and how you started this whole world of being a photographer. Well, it would be a really long story because I’m getting up there and years, but I realized that it probably more in my later years that I am really a communicator. That’s that’s what I have always loved. Even going back to grade school, I loved writing. Later in life I had a graphic design business and I kind of came to photography later in life and I came to it honestly, because of a health crisis that happened when I was fifty two. And so I was diagnosed with breast cancer and it really came out of left field. I had a job that I loved. I’ve been there ten years, so I had no, you know, ankling about changing up my life at all. But when I got that diagnosis, really my whole paradigm changed and that’s really what led me into photography. MMM, wow, wow. And and it’s interesting. I started an answers for elder’s when I was shy too. Interesting. So it yeah, we started off in the same exact times of our lives and moving forward. So that’s kind of an interesting I think that you say nothing like your eat a photography. You said you started. What was you know why? I know you’ve got the diagnosis. Tell me what was the pull of photography? Well, before I get there, I just want to share one little anecdote because it has to do with really what motivates me and kind of split drives my mission, and that is when I got diagnosed, I went through about a year’s worth of treatment. I had to surgeries for Keymo treatments at Swedish and Seattle and seven and a half weeks of radiation and then on five years of age, of and treatment afterwards. But when I went in for my first keymore treatment, I really yeah, I was nervous. They gave you steroids, or I have it, and other medications to make sure your body can deal with it. And I was getting ready to sit down for the treatment, and I still remember this moment like it was frozen in time. I said to God, okay, I don’t want to do this, but I’m going to do this because I want to know my grandchildren, I want to live, I want to know my grandchildren. And honestly, you’ve got to understand, at that point in time my daughter was a senior in high school. I only have one child and she didn’t really dated and have a boyfriend. So I was really dreaming about the future when I said that to God. But since that, since that time, it’s been thirteen years, I survieve you might have a beautiful grandchildren now. Thank you. I do, and they have ended up being my my muses, and I realized really, you know, after I survived the treatment and went through the whole experience, that it really was impressed upon me that we’re all going to leave a legacy, and I started thinking about what’s my legacy going to be. I started wanting to be more purposeful in my interactions with people. I started wanting to have connections and relationships and all the things that you know that you do when you realize life is I could not I might not be here next year. I need to think about how I’m really living in my life. So I started a blog Susan way back then to keep my stamily and friends prised of what was happening, and I called it running the race, and several of the blog posts I made, to be honest with you, right before this interview I was going back and reading some of the things I had written. I had forgotten about them, so I’m so glad that I recorded them. But one of the things that I wrote was about it a little story that I had learned about George Burns and Gracie Allen. Do you remember them? There a little bit cars I do. I thought you would. So they’re a little bit before our time, but we remembered them. So I read this story that when Gracie Allen passed away, the George was going through her personal effects and he came across a letter that she had written in the envelope and in a death drawer, addressed to George, and he opened it and it said, dear George, never place a period where God has placed a comma. And that resonated so much with me well, because when I was first diagnosed, I thought of it as a period, I really did. I thought, I don’t know if I’m going to survive this, I don’t know if I’m going to be here next year, and I I started changing the way I was thinking. I thought this, this is going to be a comm in my life and not a period at overall this, if I had to sum it all up, the one thing I realized was that I wanted to live while I was alive and I had really been treating life as if I wanted to live all I was a life. In other words, I was kind of treating it like it was addressed rehearsal. There were things I wanted to do, places I wanted to go and I just kind of didn’t do them. For, you know, I was afraid to fly, so I hadn’t blown in twenty years. And after I went through cancer, I thought life is for living. If I want to go somewhere, I’m getting on a plane and I’m going. You know, Dana, you say these things and there’s so many parallels to a lot of what I went through at the same time in my life. And and it is like, all of a sudden I was I remember slepping yellow pages, you know, and and not feeling I mean, it was a good job, but it was feeding my soul. And I think one of the things that I think when you and I both kind of found our purpose later in life, and and certainly it’s interesting, it’s like it’s never too late to start something in your life and it’s never too late to start having these conversations with your heart and say, is this where I’m going with my life? And and you know what, what is my legacy? I mean, you made that statement and I’m going like yes, it’s so true, and I think that’s probably why I’m so passionate about being out there so much and doing so much, because I don’t want to live my life as something that just existed. You know, I and I think you kind of feel the same way. It’s like there’s something out there that is a higher purpose and you’ve certainly been able to found find it, not only and do these amazing, amazing portress that you do, but you bring out the beauty and people, and I think that’s the thing that is so important. Of You know, the camera is an amazing thing because but it’s also the perspective of what you have with people. So you obviously have been now in this in this world. What are you finding with people that are in like our age group and wanting to be photographed? What? What is the typical response? Well, I think I’m a good example of the typical response, because I decided to do a portrait shoot for myself or have someone photographed me the end of two thousand and nineteen and I did it partly because I wanted to be able to empathize and relate to what my clients and so I had the feelings of Oh, I need to lose weight first, or Oh, I can’t spend money on me, that’s too much money to spend on myself, you know. Or what should I wear? I don’t know what I’m going to wear. I was worried about in my to overweight? Am I to wrinkly? You know my gewls, you know all the things that women are age think about yeah, and so I gray hair my yeah, I do. You know, I don’t have this right that you know, or I hear you and I hear I’m a photographer and I know all the reasons why people should and I still had a hard time doing it for myself. But I got to tell you, there came a point. I wrestled with it for a couple of years actually, and I finally did it and I cannot tell you how happy I am that I did it. I felt the sounds kind of strange, but I felt a little more empowered after I did it. I really, I really did. And honestly, what drove me to do it, besides wanting to relate to my clients, is that I wanted to leave something behind for my daughter and her children. I wanted them to have something where they can go, oh, that’s my grandma Dana and her sixties. HMM. I wanted them to have that and I’ve become so much more aware of how sleeping life this you know, you and I have more life behind us and ahead of us at this point and we know how fast it goes. And when I talk about legacy, I’m thinking about you know, leaving something for the people who come after us. It’s hard to make ourselves get in front of the camera and we are going to talk about that this hour. Been in the meantime, Dana, how do people reach you, because you do a free consultation for families, and tell us a little bit about how we reach you. I have a website. It’s a little bit long, but I know that you’ll link to it. Also. It’s Bella Vita creative dotnet. So Bella Vita, the ITA creative dotnet, and elevated means beautiful life. And then, yes, so everyone, we’re going to talk about photography, and I know this is a really new topic. Brant as for others, radio and Dana’s going to be with us for the hour and we’re going to learn all different types of aspects of being there and leaving a lot this legacy for your family members. Right after this, we at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guides. That will help you also navigate decisionmaking. Find US and answers for elderscom