A fresh perspective for me. I always love when I get a fresh perspective of something. It's something that I'm really passionate about in life and at Soul Care Healing. To shift the lens, even slightly, and see something ordinary in a whole new way is a kind of magic I don’t take for granted.

Each year, our small regional city of Bendigo lights up for the annual Bendigo Easter Festival. It’s a full-blown sensory feast, parades, show-bags, markets, Chinese dragons, local arts, craft stalls, egg hunts, and people. Lots of people. We’re talking an extra 85,000 people in town for the weekend. Colourful. Loud. Buzzing. Beautiful chaos.

For Christmas last year, we gave our daughter her first phone. We made this choice as a grade six student with a keen interest in photography. We were traveling overseas at Christmas, and she expressed that she'd like to take her own photos.

Now here’s where the shift happened.

I’ve been a mum for 14 years. And in that time, I’ve somehow become the official family photographer. I’ve always loved capturing moments; holidays, birthdays, quiet snuggles, wild belly laughs, dance concerts, blurry wins and milestones. I captured it all HOWEVER I captured what I enjoyed, what I thought was special, and what I thought needed to be remembered.

And now? With a camera of her own, my daughter is showing me what she sees.

As she shows me the photos that she'd taken, I realized that she has a totally different point of view of what she sees and what resonates with her.

She’d scroll through her gallery and show me her photos, and I’ll admit my first reaction to some was, “Wait… why did you take a photo of that?”
A blurry street sign. A random pattern on a wall. Someone mid-chew.
To me, it looked like chaos.

But she’d shrug and say, “I liked it. It made me smile.”

And there it was the gift.
She wasn’t trying to make art. She wasn’t filtering. She wasn’t analysing the composition.

She was just… capturing her joy. In real time. Without performance. But when I looked through the photos taken by a child, there was no structure, there was no thought about capturing the art, mood or the life affirming moment.

It was much simpler than that. It got me pondering about all the different perspectives we as humans all have on of all sorts of topics and how quick and easy it is to judge it simply because it doesn’t make sense to us. What resonates with us, what we find to be interesting often doesn’t make sense to other people and that’s ok.

And it made me realise: if all three of my kids had had their own cameras for the past 14 years, our family album would look completely different.

Their memories aren’t mine.
Their perspective is their own.
And I’d never really seen it that clearly, until now.

And sometimes, that’s all it takes an open mind and a curious question to shift a whole story.

It was also a gentle reminder to stop overthinking, to stop trying to get it all perfect. My daughter just snaps and forgets. And then later, scrolls back, giggling at her goofy, blurry, joy-soaked memories.

No pressure. No performance. Just… presence.

So from now on, I’m handing over the phone more often.
Letting the kids take the lead.
Letting them decide what moments are worth capturing for them.

And more than that, I’m going to sit beside them as they show me.
Not just the photos, but the why.
What they saw. What they felt. Why it made them smile.

Because that’s what we miss as adults sometimes.
We document, but we forget to witness.
We analyse, but we forget to observe.
We forget how to play, just for the sake of it.

Our children remind us how.

So here’s my invitation to you this week:
📸 Hand your phone or camera to your child and let them be the family photographer for a day.
Let them snap whatever catches their eye. No rules. No “better angles.” No deleting.
Then sit down together and scroll through the gallery. Ask questions. Be curious.
Let them show you how they see the world.

It’s a simple way to connect. To soften. To shift your own lens, just for a moment.

And if you’d like to hear me reflect on this story (and a few others like it), you can listen to this week’s podcast episode:
🎧 Episode 7 – “A Fresh Perspective”

Because sometimes, the smallest shift in perspective holds the biggest lesson.

It's funny, how often in life our children are our biggest teachers. They take us down a peg. Bring us back to play. Bring us back to observation, just for the sake of observation. Not for analyzing.

This childlike place was a nice place to visit.

With love (and blurry photos of dragons).

Gayle xx