PAULINA SPLECHTA
SOUTH FLORIDA BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHER
COVER ARTIST
EXPOSED MAGAZINE | Photography August 2020 Birth Issue
July 8, 2020 | Ft. Lauderdale, FL
I learned the exciting news that I was being considered for featured cover artist of @ex_posed_magazine August 2020 Birth Photographers issue with a 20 pages spread.
I was so beyond excited but also nervous.
This was the first time I was experiencing something of this magnitude. I had been featured in many online publications, tv shows and interviews in multiple countries and have had the honor to be awarded many times in various photography image competitions (like BBH and IAPBP), and I even had a few of my breastfeeding photographs published in a book, but I had never been a cover artist for a photography magazine in print.
I had all the butterflies in my stomach and the shaky hands.
I eagerly responded to every email, message, sent every additional photo, answered every question, all in eager anticipation to find out if I would be the finalist for cover image.
July 26, 2020 | Ft. Lauderdale, FL
The magazine was officially in print and one of my most favorite images of my client Michelle and her husband Aaron, after her successful vbac (vaginal birth after c/section) with Boca Midwifery on the cover as well as a 20 page spread.
I was elated!! And humbled and beyond grateful to see a career spanning over a decade come to fruition in print.
It was a Sunday, and I had to wait until August to make my announce for their August issue… and I had to wait for my magazine copies to come in the mail because I wanted to announce with photos of myself with the magazine. I am so grateful to my best friend Martha from @zenmamalove for meeting with me at a local coffee shop and capturing me with my cover issue.
I scheduled a social media post for Monday, 8/10 to finally share the news I was so proud and humbled by.
But the following day, I learned of my sister's tragic diagnosis… when my mom called me just after 9AM.
Friday
August 7, 2020⠀
⠀My sister went to the hospital in pain suddenly by ambulance, and the diagnosis: stage 4 cancer, metastasized to the liver.
I did not know that day that my mom called that the doctors did not believe she would live through the weekend.
In retrospect, maybe we weren’t told because there was hope or maybe we weren’t told so it wouldn’t be as extreme of a shock to our system? I don’t think I will ever truly understand all of how it went down and why.
I never cried so hard in my life. I don't know what I felt, if scared, thinking we had months of chemo ahead of us? Or if deep inside I knew this was the end the moment I got the news. I don't know.
All I do know is that my world stood still.
According to the calendar, it’s actually been 11 weeks plus 3 days since I got that phone call from my mom and my world is still standing still. Everything around me is moving and its bizarre because I feel like I am standing in a snow globe, you shake it, everything moves, but I am standing still like that tiny snow man figurine inside.
Monday August 10, 2020
My sister lived through the weekend.
And Monday, August 10th, the other test results started coming in, because I guess in Europe everything is shut down over the weekend (a cultural difference I will likely never easily understand, having been raised to work hard around the clock in America).
The stage 4 breast cancer hadn’t only metastasized to her liver. It had also spread everywhere. Her brain, her bones, and more. It was a miracle or perplexing, complicated mind explosion how she hadn’t realized something else was going on that was beyond severe before, but it was also a miracle she was still with us on Monday.
I cancelled my social media post for August 10, 2020 because upon hearing that my sister passed away the early morning of Friday, August 14, 2020….
I decided I would not share this news at all, and tucked the magazine into my bookcase, and the photos deep into a folder, after that initial diagnosis phone call. I felt it was completely insignificant because in that moment I was ready to even sell the clothes off my back just to have my sister back. ⠀
Friday August 14, 2020
We ultimately had 7 days of my sister’s presence through phone call and occasionally facetime from Europe with us here in America.
Oddly, the further my sister’s health drifted from Earth, the closer my relationship got pulled to my sister’s daughter, my goddaughter.
Until the 7th day, she rested and was taken into heaven. ⠀
Losing my sister here on Earth as I have known her, getting messages from her on whatsapp, seeing her for holidays. Hearing her living voice with every new sentence that would be born the moment she would say it, losing all of this, brought me pain and confusion beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
Losing my family members from their personalities/habits/traits that I had known all them to have, and them all become transformed into a different version of themselves after her loss, has been something beyond anything I had ever experienced.
When I was in my first year of college, I had broken up with my boyfriend of 2 years, and my heart break was such a powerful emotion I withdrew from all 5 classes during my second semester at University of Florida and upon finding out, my parents showed up in Gainesville and told me I am coming home, without saying goodbye to any friends, or else. That day my world stood still. My jaw dropped. I was in a state of shock. I felt option less. I felt cornered into a wall. I felt misunderstood. I felt abandoned and alone. I felt many things as a 19 year old fresh college student being faced with what I felt was an impossibly difficult turn of events.
It’s been 16 years since that experience at UF. In retrospect, what an easy emotional/psychological experience that was to stomach compared to this.
This changed everything, and I know it has changed either temporarily or it’s changed everything forever, never to be the same again, and for lack of better words, everything absolutely sucks. It sucks.
But I somehow know I will get through this. And I will transform and evolve. Because I was prepared for this, unknowingly, my life of trials and tribulations led to a very strong woman and I have been built to rise.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
It had been almost two weeks since my sister's passing.....
August 26, 2020 would have been my sister’s 53rd birthday which she celebrates from the other side, while we here on Earth have painfully broken hearts. ⠀
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It was this day, my sister’s 53rd birthday that I decided I would share this magazine and this post
In the image above, I saw and enjoyed my sister here during end of June 2019/after fourth of July 2019, and I look at her eerily, with tears covering my face, as I was standing next to my sister who surely must have already been severely ill as approximately 13 months later she would be taken from us… My sister passed away from stage 4 breast cancer and we didn’t even know she was sick.
The first line of the magazine reads:
"Meet Paulina Splechta, our Cover Artist who is a first-generation immigrant from Poland"⠀
My sister who passed away on August 14th, her name is Agnieszka.
It's a very common name in Poland, where we were born, but not so much in the rest of the world.
Despite it being challenging to pronounce, my sister embraced her ancestry and used her birth-given-name on a daily basis with friends, neighbors and even work colleagues, with great pride and admiration for our entire background.⠀
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So I dedicate this esteemed recognition as the Cover Artist in honor of my sister Agnieszka. I too celebrate and am proud be Polish, a hardworking artist, putting family and commitment to my given word on first place. This is for you sis.⠀
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Happy Birthday in Heaven to my sweet sister Agnieszka.⠀
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Thank you to all my clients who made this magazine possible.
October 26, 2020
Finally, today, two months after your 53rd birthday, that you spent celebrating in Heaven this year and all years to come, I finally was able to put together this blog post. It’s been impossibly hard to write anything after such a gut wrenching pain of losing the version of you I had gotten to know and love over 35 years, and it has been so sad because of all my Earthly limitations for what I am able to understand on Earth, to accept that the new version of you is one I can’t see or hear. So here I am, two months after your 53rd birthday, finally putting this blog post together to memorialize my dedication of this Cover Magazine to you my sister.
