Baton Rouge Family Photography Session

Some people build buildings, some build cars or resorts or corporations or new magazine designs or flavors of gum or some other long, lengthy list of other fabulous possibilities…

And then you have the ones that build, well… others… 

Whatever you do, I believe it’s to make this world a better place to live, but I do believe there is something quite irreplaceable about impacting the actual life trajectory of another person. 

And this is what she has been for me and thousands of others.

The gal pictured above- Alliece. Never known of one prior and know I will not know of one greater. 

The one with the curly, red hair and the tall, long frame. Usually in black and always, always with red lipstick.  A friend sent me a message yesterday that read, “you really don’t know how weird your friends are till you start to describe them to someone else”. She was referring to me but I laugh because I find that with lots of the people I know- including this lady here. 

Alliece is one of those lovely people that is indescribable. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is about her but you know there is something incredibly different that makes you want to know her. I love people that do that to me, like a magnetic pull into their wild, curious world as if I have to know what makes them up. I suppose that’s the people person side of me, always wanting to know the next person’s story. 

For Alliece, it’s all over the way she talks, the looks she gives and the words she shares. She has this certain gaze that looks past your face and into your heart- to really dig down and get to the root of what’s going on. It’s an incredible gift to not see only at face value. I am miserable at that in some moments, some days, but not this gal, no, she is adamant to let every person be heard, every song to be sung.

She has single-handedly touched and cared for the lives of thousands- dare I say millions- of men and women lives that she has encountered since stepping into this world of work many of years ago. She has gotten in the trenches with the lost, broken and wounded in the world of Child Services, over and over again all around this beautiful state of Louisiana, the nation and this world. “Blessed be the poor”, she told me one day. “The poor in Spirit, because they will see God”. She can’t help but go where the broken reside. It’s in her. It propels her. It wakes her up in the morning for another day. To women’s homes to Katrina relief to inner city and the elusive world of human trafficking to every single square inch in between. It’s truly unfathomable how one person could give so much of their life for so many others. 

And so we Others got together to celebrate all the times she constantly leaned in for us… 

Many, many, many more of the others… 

Year after another year for ALL THE OTHERS… 

This fearless women and her charge into another year with touching many more others… 

(More. Others.)

(the list just goes on and on)

(notice the red lip stick in her honor) 

And when that strong, little lady cried like a baby when we all gave our speeches on how our lives would never be the same without her constant support into us, it was a moment that none of us will ever forget in which we shared with her the blood and sweat and tears she gave for us. The fears she helped push aside, the Truth she constantly poured out and into us, the miraculous prayers prayed. Every single moment she gave to us. Freely. 

And the last to share their sentiments was the one we were there to celebrate ourselves and she marveled at our reflections and commissioned us to share what we had gained from her investment…

to others… 

So here is to a life legacy for… 

Others. 

“There is no greater love than to give up one’s life for a friend”