A mother of four, photographer, nature lover. Someone trying to make sense of it all, through photos and stories. 

I try to be free in all senses of the word, so I made the leap and now work with what I love doing; taking pictures, storing this life in moments, both for myself and for clients. My heart is in photographing birth and motherhood, but I take on just about any photography job. 
(See my birth photos at www.birth.no and the rest of my work portfolio at www.mariavatne.no.)

I live on a farm in Norway with my man Nik and my children Ronja, Freja, Falk and Ulv, plus a bunch of animals. We grow our own food as far as the seasons allow it, we don't go to kindergarten, the three youngest ones will be homeschooled.

We govern our own lives, we strive for independence, we want to be in this life wild and free and full of love.

All is full of love / Donations for immunotherapy.

All is full of love / Donations for immunotherapy.

Maria Vatne

Although I had good news after the first rounds of chemo therapy, the last scans I’ve had show that the cancer hasn’t given in yet and that there is still metastasis in several places in my body. A lot of the initial cancer has disappeared, but some new spots have shown up, and my form isn’t very good at the moment. The only offer of treatment from the national cancer hospital is more chemo, but it is not offered curatively - which means that they don’t believe it’s going to heal me anyway. And after the six rounds I did, I decided that was it as far as chemo goes. No more - unless the odds were really, really good.
I have researched a lot into the field of natural cancer therapies, and have tried many of them. There are still other things to try in that area, so I’ll go on with that. It’s a bit of a puzzle game though - there is no one answer to healing cancer; I think one has to find what works for you, and that might not be what works for the next person. It’s a very complex image, which consists of what medicine you take, what food you eat, what supplements you take, what mental/emotional/spiritual work you do. I have dived deeply into this and am still figuring out the mechanisms that might let this disease go from my body.
That said, because I feel in worse shape now than in a long time, I know I need to act now. So with a lot of help from my dad, I went to a private hospital in Oslo (Aleris) for a consult to see if they had anything to offer me. And they did! They can give me immunotherapy, a new type of medicine which is still being tried out in different fields of cancer treatment. The numbers are quite good, both for cancer in general and for my type (cervical), and most of the patients who show up there are stage 4 and have been given up by the public health system. So it’s definitely worth a try.
The medicine is still not approved by the Norwegian state, so it’s not covered financially, and it costs a lot of money. If it works, we’re looking at a two-year treatment which will sum up to about two million Norwegian kroner. We will know if it works after three months of infusions (every three weeks).
So here’s the thing: My beautiful friend Wenche has started a donation campaign for me to help collect money for this treatment, on a Norwegian crowdfunding site called Spleis. If you want to help share the link to it, I would be super happy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here is the link.

And to everyone who has donated money so far: I cannot express with words how thankful and moved I am, and how loved I feel. It is completely mindblowing to see the energy that is being mobilized for me. From every pore of me, from the bottom of my heart and the innermost of my marrow, T H A N K Y O U.

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Winter vs. spring.

Winter vs. spring.