I’m Lyndell Maree, a passionate nature lover, cancer survivor, and mama to three beautiful girls. I feel like I have experienced my fair share of loss and grief, yet I’ve always found healing and reconnection in nature.
I love the quiet of the outdoors. Because it is not really quiet. Sit still, listen, and you can hear the sound of life buzzing, growing, moving, calling. It’s an amazing hum of life.’
In 2011, Charlotte Mabel was stillborn. She was small, beautiful, delicate. I remember holding her and just staring at her sweet face for hours. I wanted to remember every detail. I was so scared of forgetting her.
You can’t stop loving someone. It’s like trying to stop the sun coming up.
In the time that followed, I spent many hours making and creating in her memory. I started volunteering for a charity that supported families through their grief and through that helped other families create keepsakes and momentos of their child’s short life. I have created hundreds of images for parents and grandparents to remember babies born too soon. In 2013 I started a volunteer group dedicated to making clothing and a ‘memory bag’ called ‘Butterfly’ with the aim of supporting parents, at the time of loss, to slow down and take time to remember their baby.
In 2017 our family was dealt another blow when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I spent almost a year going through treatment. Our lives were put on hold. It was brutal, but it worked. I came out the other side; our family and our marriage working. The chemo has impacted on my ability to think and there are days and weeks when I have dark flashbacks and grieve over the impact this has had on our lives but I continue to strive to see the hope every day moving forward.
Through this time my interest in photography took off as I searched to find the beauty and joy I knew was still in life and capture those small moments, as a reminder to myself. Photography helps me to get out, explore and share my passion.
Mabel’s Garden was started not only as a tribute to my daughter but also a hope for my family’s future that we would one day have this beautiful garden of our own.
I want to share the beauty and love of nature I find. I want to bring a connection to nature in people’s lives. For others who are facing loss, I want to bring some comfort and beauty and the chance of a memory created for love.
Mabel means ‘my beloved’ and that is what she is to me and this is my beloved’s garden.
So if you need a moment of quiet beauty, a pause in your day, I hope you will visit us here in Mabel’s Garden, where love grows. xo
