Special thanks to Qur'an Hodge and family for inviting us into their world and for sharing such an intimate story with us.

I don’t know what I really look like. I can only see myself in fragments. I can glue some fragments together and convince myself they make a whole, but the pieces never quite line up. There is always something missing or distorted, some part that seems to belong to another version of me. No matter how expansive the fragment, someone else’s perception of me has always felt restrictive. Claustrophobic. Like clothes that never really fit. Perhaps this is why I wear really baggy clothing… to breathe better.

A few years ago I locked my cameras in a drawer and stopped telling stories.

What I didn’t understand at the time: when I stopped telling other people’s stories, my own story stopped too. I spent that stretch living inside other people’s passions, other people’s goals, telling myself I’d find my fulfillment in helping them find theirs. I didn’t.