Hi, I'm Courtney

Long before I photographed families for a living, I cooked professionally. I spent nearly a decade in kitchens, learning that feeding someone is about so much more than putting food on a plate. It's one of the simplest ways we know how to take care of each other.

Years later, I became a certified birth doula. Then I became a mother myself.

After having my babies, I was lucky enough to experience postpartum care through After the Baby Bump. Having someone step into our home and care for me during a season when so much attention naturally belonged to the baby changed the way I understood what postpartum support could feel like.

And somewhere in the middle of raising my own babies, photographing other people's lives, making dinner, washing another load of tiny clothes and trying to remember who I was underneath all of it, I started thinking about the kind of care I wish existed for more of us.

Not someone who arrives and hands you your baby so you can get back to taking care of everything.

Someone who takes care of some of everything for you.

That's where The Keeping came from.

From knowing firsthand what it feels like to be cared for — and realizing that the seemingly unrelated things I'd spent my life doing could come together to create that kind of care for someone else.

Feeding people. Caring for people. Noticing the pieces of a life that deserve to be remembered.

I'm not coming into your home expecting you to host me. I'm coming to make things easier.

There can be laundry on the floor. You can still be in yesterday's clothes. You can cry. You can take a nap. You can hand me the baby. You can keep the baby.

You get to be exactly where you are. I'll meet you there.