Hope Heals: Finding Beauty in the Rough with Mariela
“Don’t wait to celebrate the life you have been given, even if it looks different from the one you thought you would have.” Hope Heals, Katherine & Jay Wolf
On December 27, 2023, Mariela went into the hospital in septic shock. She would spend nearly four months there before finally being discharged on April 19, 2024. During that time, she lost both of her legs above the knee. Even typing those words feels heavy. But sitting across from her, photographing her, listening to her speak about everything, what stayed with me most was not tragedy. It was her steadiness and willingness to keep showing up for life, even after it became almost unrecognizable.
“I still don’t grasp the full picture,” she says. “But I am slowly adapting to the world around me, and embracing the challenges.”
There was no self-pity in the way she said it. Just honesty. The kind that only comes from someone who has had everything change overnight and is still learning how to rebuild around it. As a photographer, there are some sessions you walk away from knowing they were about so much more than portraits. This was definitely one of them. It mattered because it documented a version of Mariela that deserves to be seen… not hidden. Not edited down to make others comfortable.
I think society often rushes people through survival stories. We celebrate the “before and after” without acknowledging the middle… the adapting, the frustration, the relearning, the quiet victories nobody else will notice. But those moments are the story. Mariela talked about missing and reclaiming things most of us never think twice about. Walking into church. Hiking. Standing long enough to bake in her kitchen. Taking her children to the park. Driving again.
“They’re mundane, everyday tasks,” she said, “that mean so much to me and my family.”
I honestly had to pause after she said that because she’s right! The ordinary things become sacred when you almost lose them. And hearing her speak made me reflect on how quickly we move through our own lives without realizing how much beauty exists in the smallest moments. But honestly, one of the moments from her session that will stay with me the longest had nothing to do with the camera.
It was watching her with her boys.
At one point during the shoot, I looked at her and said, “I hope one day my boys love me as well as yours do.” Because while boys will absolutely be boys… loud, wild, playful, climbing on everything one second and hugging us the next, there is something so deep about the way they love her. The way they instinctively stayed close to her side. The way they helped her without being asked. And mostly, the way they looked at her. You can tell they know her strength even if they’re still too young to fully understand her story. And what got me most is that she’s doing all of this while raising two young children on her own. There was this unspoken balance between them that felt impossible to ignore. She carries them emotionally, spiritually, and with every ounce of herself as a mother. And in return, they carry pieces of her, too.
When I asked what strength has looked like during this journey, her answer came instantly:
“Being brave for my children. Everything I do, I do for them.”
You could feel that in every part of this session. The kind of brave that gets your body out of bed on the days your mind is tired too. The kind that chooses hope because your children deserve to see you keep going. The kind that keeps rebuilding, even when the future still feels uncertain.
Another quote from Hope Heals stayed with me while editing:
“Hope is acknowledging that all is not well, but understanding that all is not lost.”
That feels like the exact space Mariela is standing in right now. Not pretending this has been easy. Not pretending she has all the answers, but continuing forward anyway. And through her peaks and valleys, she is already driving again, which is something she told me she’s incredibly proud of. Honestly, she should be!
When I look at her portraits now, I don’t just see resilience… I see someone learning how to exist in a completely reshaped world without surrendering herself in the process. Mariela told me she hopes people see “someone who refuses to give up” when they view these images, and I think they will. But I also think they’ll see something else too: proof that hope can exist alongside grief. That healing is not linear, and bravery can feel soft. That survival changes a person, but it does not erase them. At the end of our conversation, she said something I know I’ll carry with me for a long time:
“Hope heals. It just takes a little bit of hope to change a lot of things.”
And after getting to know her for just a small amount of time, I truly believe it does.
