Instagram story viewer> @jackiewildkinwandering> Posts

Jackleen Leed • Artist at Wild Kin Wandering

@jackiewildkinwandering

3.2K

followers

3327

following

Family + Rewilding Photographer
Poetic, Embodied, & Soulful Imagery
Wild Mothering, Herbalism, & Slow Living
in the Salish Sea
PhD Psych/Child Dev’t

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

There are some family mornings that feel ordinary while you’re living them, and then somehow, later, you realize they were exactly the kind of morning you want to someday step right back into.

A little French bakery in Magnolia, warm pastries and sleepy smiles. A walk down to the beach while the autumn sun was still low and golden. Tide pools and salt air and a baby taking in the whole world with that wide-eyed seriousness babies have. Then the park to wander, play, and let the morning stretch out a little longer.

This is one of my favorite things about photographing families. We don’t need to manufacture some perfect version of your life for the camera. We can just follow the morning you’re already having and pay attention to the good stuff that might otherwise pass by unnoticed.

Mom, dad, baby, sunshine, the changing season, a favorite bakery, a little time by the water. Nothing particularly extraordinary, and somehow everything worth remembering.

Because this is the stuff that becomes childhood. These are the mornings your baby won’t remember, but you will. And someday, these photographs will be part of how you remember not only what they looked like, but what it felt like to be their family, right here, in this season of your life. 🤍

“Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light”— Frank Grillparzer

Welcome to #lifeilluminatedloop - we are a group of photographers who love, admire, and embrace the light. Next up: @chelseamarasphoto

#seattlelifestylephotographer #seattlefamilyphotographer #whidbeyislandfamilyphotographer #candidfamilyphotos taken in Seattle, Washington by @jackiewildkinwandering

30

16

12 days ago

The sunflowers are still standing, but the light has begun to change.

There is something about this particular turning of the year that asks us to pause long enough to notice what we have gathered, what has come to fruit, and what we are ready to stop carrying into the next season.

The autumn equinox is a strange and beautiful threshold. For one brief moment, light and dark stand in balance before the wheel tips toward longer nights, deeper roots, and the great inward movement of the year.

And I keep thinking about how much of the natural world already knows how to do this.

The trees draw their treasures back into their roots before they let their leaves fall. Perennials pull their sweetness down into the dark. Salmon return home, give their bodies back to the rivers, and feed the forests that will hold the next generation. Fungi take what has finished and quietly turn it into something that can nourish what comes next.

Nothing is wasted. Nothing is asked to bloom forever.

Perhaps we are not meant to either.

For this Mabon, I wrote about the autumn equinox as an initiation, about the harvest we often forget to acknowledge, the things we might finally stop watering, and the descent so many of us resist when the season begins asking us to turn inward.

I wrote, too, about motherhood, Persephone and Demeter, and the possibility that the dark is not something we have to fear or fix, but a place where we are sometimes quietly being remade.

If you are feeling the pull toward slower days, deeper roots, and a little less outward striving, this one is for you.

🍂 Read *Mabon, the Autumn Equinox, Balance, and the Descent* at the link in my bio.

#mabon #wildfeminine #wheeloftheyear #matrescence #slowmotherhood by @jackiewildkinwandering

15

2

a month ago

A love letter to the mother who knows, somewhere beneath the laundry and the snack crumbs and the endless reaching arms, that this is all passing.

You may not remember exactly how small those legs felt, or the particular weight of your child against the front of your body, a precious tether to your own humanity and divinity. You may forget the way your arms instinctively curved around them, how often you carried them without even thinking about it.

But your body knows.

It knows the weight of them. The warmth of them. The familiar little shape that once fit so completely against you.

This is the kind of motherhood I want to photograph. Not the polished version. Not the proof that everyone was dressed beautifully and looking at the camera. The quieter evidence of a life being lived together.

The places where your bodies meet. The gestures you make a hundred times a day without realizing they are already becoming memory.

Because one day, they will no longer fit here.

The little legs.
Your hands around them.
The softness of your dress.
The ordinary way you carried your whole world through an afternoon.

You were there, too, mama.
And you deserve photographs that remember you.

#documentaryfamilyphotography #motheringthemother #sacredordinary #slowmotherhood #simplymothers taken in Seattle, Washington by @jackiewildkinwandering

24

5

a month ago

Waiting amongst the goldenrod. Little buds readying themselves to bloom.

“But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth.”
~Margaret Fuller

#simplychildhood #childhoodunplugged #gardeningwithkids #natureschooling #seattlefamilyphotographer taken in Whidbey Island, WA by @jackiewildkinwandering

15

4

2 months ago

She will not remember the tidy house or the folded laundry. She will remember this, the safe press of her face to yours, the smell of you that meant home before she had the word for it. You are the first place your children ever loved, and you deserve to be in the frame with them.

#theinvisiblemother #motherhoodunplugged #sacredordinary #seattlemotherhoodphotographer #presenceoverperfection taken in Seattle, Washington by @jackiewildkinwandering

10

1

2 months ago

Two girls, one puppy, a garden, all of them unruly and growing like weeds.

#seattlefamilyphotographer #goldenmountaindog #twingirls #seattlemotherhoodphotographer #simplychildren taken in Whidbey Island, WA by @jackiewildkinwandering

16

2

2 months ago

There are seasons of motherhood I wish I could press my whole body against and hold there.

This one is one of them.

Two little girls running in wellies at the edge of the sea. Climbing piles of dirt, only to slide back down coated in a shimmery layer of dust before doing it all over again. Filling buckets with stones that the sea carried to this moment in time.

Salt on their skin. Curls tangled by the wind. The sky a hazy glow around us.

And me, standing there, knowing I will never have this exact version of them again.

This is the part of motherhood that feels almost impossible to photograph—the knowing that while you’re living it, it’s already becoming memory.
So I photograph it.

Not because I need proof that they were happy.
Not because childhood needs to look beautiful all the time.
But because this ordinary, wild, fleeting life is worth remembering.

The small hands. The wet feet. The sisterhood. The golden light. The way they belong completely to themselves and a little bit to each other, too.
Proof of life.
For them, someday.
And for me, now.

“Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light”— Frank Grillparzer

Welcome to #lifeilluminatedloop - we are a group of photographers who love, admire, and embrace the light. Next up: @kerfoxphotos

#rewildingmotherhood #twinmotherhood #documentaryfamilyphotography #seattlefamilyphotographer taken in Pacific Northwest by @jackiewildkinwandering

24

9

2 months ago

There are childhoods that seem to belong to the wild.

To driftwood forts and cold feet. To pockets full of treasures and dogs racing ahead. To the particular kind of freedom that comes when a child is allowed to wander, wonder, and simply be.

This is what I love about photographing families at the beach.

Not the perfectly posed version of family life, but the little boy disappearing into a tangle of driftwood, his dog faithfully following, his parents close enough to catch him when he turns back. The laughter that happens between photographs. The tiny rituals no one thinks to preserve because they are simply part of an ordinary afternoon.

These are the photographs I hope become treasures.

Not because everyone was looking at the camera, but because years from now, you will look at them and remember exactly how it felt to be here.

The salt air.
The weathered wood.
The dog underfoot.
The child you loved with your whole body.

The wild, beautiful little life you made together. 🤍

#whidbeyislandphotographer #goldendoodle #seattlefamilyphotographer #candidfamilyphotos #washingtonfamilyphotographer taken in Whidbey Island, WA by @jackiewildkinwandering

13

1

2 months ago

There are some children who seem to grow up right alongside you.

I photographed her when she was teeny tiny, all wonder and softness and little-girl magic. And now here she is, standing at the edge of everything that comes next, with the sea behind her and so much becoming ahead.

There is something almost sacred about watching a child become a young woman. Not because childhood is something to leave behind, but because all those earlier versions of her are still here, woven into the person she is becoming.

The little girl. The wild girl. The quiet observer. The daughter. The dreamer. The young woman with her own horizon now.

I feel so lucky that families trust me to witness these chapters, again and again.

What a beautiful thing it is to photograph a life in seasons. 🤍

#seattlefamilyphotographer #whidbeyislandphotographer #portraiture #seattlelifestylephotographer taken in Seattle, Washington by @jackiewildkinwandering

33

11

2 months ago

Forever exploring

#simplychildhood #letthembelittle #seattlefamilyphotographer #whidbeyislandlife #childledphotography taken in Whidbey Island, WA by @jackiewildkinwandering

12

2

2 months ago

There is a wilder self in you that the world taught you to quiet.

Somewhere beneath the managing and the meeting of everyone’s needs, there is a self you may have half forgotten. The one who knew what she wanted, who spoke before she softened it, who moved through the world by instinct rather than permission. The old stories call her the Wild Woman, and most of us were taught, gently and relentlessly, to tame her.

But she is not a lost thing. She is only an unremembered one, and she surfaces the moment we stop caging her, in the middle of a long swim, on a walk with no destination, in the rare hour when no one needs anything from us. You do not have to become her. You only have to dig her up.

#wildwoman #wildfeminine #rewilding #womenwhorunwiththewolves #divinefeminine taken in Pacific Northwest by @jackiewildkinwandering

6

2

2 months ago

Take me back to Paris pretty please 🧡

#twins #wanderlust #seattlefamilyphotographer #identicaltwingirls #parisjetaime taken in Paris, France by @jackiewildkinwandering

14

3

2 months ago