Letting go

This image symbolises the death of childhood as girls morph from little girls into adolescence. The transition can almost happen over night, and as much as they embrace getting older, there is a part of childhood innocence that we mourn as parents, as do our children. Ever so silently.

I constructed this image using many separate images. It is setting the scene for a story about the journey I am observing as my 12 daughter begins to navigate her way through the awkward landscape of adolescence. This is the abyss where girls throw there childhood innocence into, never to be seen again.

It's painful and sudden. The transition from a little girl into adolescence. I watch as my daughter and her friends turn their back on the who they were almost yesterday and try to become who they think they are. And it changes all the time. I don't envy that time of confusion and hormones and not really understanding how temporary this transition really is.

This image symbolises that transition of discarding the childhood persona and emerging into a new world of unchartered lands. The friendships, the fun, the rebellion, the dramas. Oh, it's all just beginning.

There will come a day when you won't believe you wanted to grow up.