It says right there, “Words & Photos by Virginia Greuloch.”
I reread the line over and over when Click Magazine showed up in my mailbox this week. Long before I was a photographer, I had a dream of seeing my name in a byline. I used to write all the time. Stories, essays, journals, blogs. My high school English teachers who are here on Facebook can probably vouch for me on that one. In college, I interned at a media company in their print department writing publicity articles for trade magazines – but somehow seeing my name in print in those magazines has never “counted.” Those articles weren’t my own thoughts – they were me turning interview questions into sentences, typing them up, and sending them off to print. They weren’t really me.
People who know me in real life, or who listened to me speak at Click Away last October, know it took a really long time for me to get to this place in my life where I know what it is that I want to do. I floated out lots of different business ideas over the years, switched careers once or twice, and generally spent a lot of time putzing around trying to figure out what it is that I wanted to do with my life. Throughout every single idea I had about my career path, my parents have always said to me, “Have you considered writing?” And my answer was always, “Yeah, but…” followed by whatever excuse I was using to mask the underlying self-doubt and fear I had that I wasn’t really good enough or original enough, which ultimately led me down the path of, “Who do I think I am?” and “Who would ever want to read something I wrote?”
Over the last couple years after I had my kids, writing became something that I could just not NOT do anymore. Somewhere along the line here on this little Facebook page, I started pouring out my thoughts about motherhood – both my failures and my triumphs – and I started to connect with more of you who have the same feelings. Being an entrepreneur and a mother of small children can be lonely business sometimes, and connecting with you guys through my words and pictures here became something that fueled that part of me that longs for contact and support and real conversation. It stopped mattering to me if what I was writing was too personal or if I let people in behind the curtain. What mattered to me was that I started to have real conversations in real life about the things that I was writing. I started getting messages saying, “Me too.” And I started booking clients who were connecting with me not in spite of all the personal stuff I was putting out into the world, but because of it (which is actually what this article is all about).
Without all of you giving me a place to share my words and pictures, the words and pictures on these pages would have never happened. Thank you all for giving me this safe space where I can show up as I am and share these intimate moments of my life with you. And thank you for showing up as you are and sharing yours with me. Words and photos. That might be all it seems like there is on the surface, but words and photos…well, they’re everything to me. Words and photos brought us together to this moment. And I am so thankful for each moment I get with you all here.
Thank you, Click Magazine, for this incredible opportunity to share my words and photos on your beautiful pages.
xo, VA
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