The Year of the Snake

November 30, 2025 Lydia Armstrong

What a year. For everyone, everywhere.

I saw a reel this morning on Instagram about the tumult of 2025 and the Year of the Snake, which symbolizes transformation and shedding. I can relate to transformation and shedding—over the last eleven months exactly, health issues and a limited capacity have led me to evaluate what’s important. I’ve learned who I can count on and who I can’t, and where I want to spend the energy I have. Heading into December, my world feels smaller than it did a year ago, but focused in the right places.

Some of you reading this will know these details already but a recap: On December 30th of last year, I woke at 3am with a severely swollen tongue. I went to the ER, where they assumed I was having an allergic reaction. I was not having an allergic reaction, a team of allergists, oral surgeons, ENTs, geneticists, and other specialists gradually realized as my symptoms continued for months. My tongue remained at least slightly swollen at all times; my hands and feet and random parts of my arms began to swell months later. The swellings are red and hot, and I was tested for infections and blood clots over and over. I went to the emergency room five times in 2025. They sent me away each time with steroids and antibiotics and referrals to more specialists.

I had blood drawn countless times, often for tests other doctors had already ran. I walked around half the year with bruises purpling my inner arms, my poor wracked veins hard to find and harder to stick. I brought stacks of printouts and photographs to my new specialists. Diagnosis after diagnosis was ruled out, until finally, very recently, two of my doctors found an answer. I have an autoimmune disorder that goes by many names: delayed pressured angioedema, delayed pressure urticaria, chronic urticaria, chronic spontaneous urticaria.

Angioedema means swelling, and urticaria means hives, and basically this diagnosis means my body interprets certain triggers like pressure as allergens and releases histamine that causes body parts to swell. The light pressure of my tongue resting against the roof of my mouth while I sleep, the pressure of resting my forearms on my desk as I work, of carrying a basket full of laundry or holding something heavy, or once just twisting the cap off a very, very tightly sealed bottle of tea—all of these things have caused my body to swell and welt, the reaction usually delayed several hours after contact, often in the middle of the night while I am asleep.

The connection between pressure trigger and the resulting swelling was nearly impossible to make.

My body thinks the pressure is an allergen. My actual allergies—all environmental, none food related—have little to do with the existence of my disorder, but do make it worse. In the spring, I had to wear a mask against the pollen or my tongue would swell. And while I do not have any food allergies, inflammatory foods like wheat, sugar, and artificial sweeteners can trigger the disorder itself, so my diet has gotten super clean.

The anxiety that came with not knowing what was wrong with me was often worse than my actual symptoms, so having a diagnosis has made flare-ups much easier to handle. I no longer go to the ER when my body goes haywire, instead riding it out at home with steroids and antihistamines that help reduce the severity of my symptoms but don’t prevent or eliminate them.

As with a lot of autoimmune disorders, mine is mysteriously systemic and there are other symptoms my doctors don’t have much response to. My hands are often stiff and sore as though I have arthritis (I do not), worse after a hand swelling but happens simultaneously in both hands even though only one swells at a time. My feet hurt; I learned to love sneakers this year. Flare-ups are connected to menstruation in a way that hasn’t been well studied, like most things in women’s medicine, but things are worse around my period. Sometimes swellings come with an upset stomach and general rashes and itchy spots around my body. And most of all, I am tired.

But we are getting there! I currently have an immunologist that I like and trust (shout out Arin Lee at VCU!). I’m learning what triggers me and how to avoid those things, and will be starting monthly injections of Xolair soon, a drug that has iffy results but could help. I feel hopeful and grateful to have some direction. The medical industry was not kind to me this year—I had doctors berate me and talk down to me, endless billing and insurance problems. The trauma of being sick in America is real.

This is not the transformation I would have chosen for myself, but it rarely is. I did not enjoy 2025 and at the same time I am grateful for it. Being exhausted and stressed and sore forced me to clear out the noise. I finished writing a novel, after fourteen years of trying. There is workshopping and editing to do, but it is a book. I read a lot this year. I photographed only the things I really wanted to. I spent a lot of time with my mom and a little time with good friends. 2026 is going to be a big year for me and I feel razor-sharp.

Photos from my novel-finishing celebration at Chimborazo Park in October. Polaroids by Amy Robison. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Boots

April 10, 2025 Lydia Armstrong

I grew up in a small neighborhood in Southside, wedged between Richmond City proper and the ribbon of Jeff Davis Turnpike unspooling towards Chester. The pike was a few blocks from the corner where our one-story ranch house sat, near Hopkins Road and Meadowdale Boulevard. As a teenager, I spent half my nights barreling north up Jeff Davis until it became Belvidere, a main artery slicing through the city near campus, to catch punk shows at Twisters and loiter on bus stop benches, and the other half drinking Boone’s apple wine at Dutch Gap and smoking pot in strangers’ fields down Iron Bridge Road. We went to house shows in the city and trespassed at an old rock quarry in the woods to go swimming in its wide mouth. split between town and country.

Me at the rock quarry off Beach Road, 1998 or 1999.

When I look at my father, this duality makes sense. It was my dad who brought us to Southside—where he’d also grown up—first around Broad Rock and Southside Plaza before we later settled in the rancher for about fifteen years between 1986 and 2000, when I was five to nineteen years old.

My father was a collection of dualities. Elegant and rough, generous but a thief, kind yet brutal—it’s not a stretch to picture him at home in two places at once.

My father Steve Armstrong, back row, fourth from left, in sunglasses and a white tank top.

When we were kids, Dad took my brother and me to run wild on his friend Ralph’s property, butted against a thick stand of woods on one side and a daycare on the other. We loved the woods for the rope swing hanging dangerously over a shallow ravine inside, and we loved the daycare because it never, ever seemed to be in operation, the rickety playground all ours. The land between was littered with broken-down bumper cars, a garage of old arcade games, a giant Big Boy from Big Boy’s Burgers, the enormous pompadoured mascot holding aloft a plastic cheeseburger, Ralph’s antiques hoard cracking under the high summer sun.

He took us to his friend John Sheehan’s lake full of child-sized lily pads, and to see his cousin Sandy’s horses. My childhood was largely spent outdoors, covered in mud and bug bites. The draw to the city end of the turnpike didn’t come until adolescence, when suddenly neon held more glow for me than fireflies. At the turn of the new millennium, the ranch house fell into foreclosure, and the four of us—my mother, Dad, my brother, and me—crossed the river. My mother had moved out several months earlier and was living with a sister in the city until she could secure an apartment with her Jordanian boyfriend, and my dad headed to the east end of Henrico to a rental near the racetrack. I wound up first with my mom and her boyfriend, and later in the east end with my dad before getting my own apartment in the city, north of the James, where I’ve lived since.

Dad, a rifle, his snakeskin boots. Late 1980s or early 1990s.

My father had a complicated background and wasn’t close to his family. He was raised by his grandmother, a first generation immigrant who’d come to Richmond from England in 1923, and never knew his birth father, so his local family was sparse and largely absent. I didn’t know them well as a child, or later as an adult, but I was close with my mom’s family.

My mother is one of nine siblings, eight of them alive and all of them local to Richmond, with many nieces and nephews—cousins to me—who have now gone on to add to our enormous family themselves. There are many of us, and on this side of the tree, we are Cuban and loud, usually fun, often dramatic. In my 20s and 30s, I gravitated towards the warm, festive atmosphere I found at my mother’s family gatherings. I didn’t give much thought to my father’s estranged side until he became sick with cancer and sold the family river home he’d eventually retired to.

Dad at home on an inlet of the Potomac River, Heathsville, Virginia, 2018

Built from cinderblocks by his adoptive father in the 1950s, the cottage was modest and mildewy, and my father lived there alone on the water for most of the last years of his life. When he became too ill to continue making the frequent two-hour drive to the VA hospital in Richmond required for his care, he moved back to town and sold the river house, leaving most of his belongings behind—including several albums and boxes of old family photos that I quickly snapped up, and now occasionally share on an Instagram page dedicated to them.

These photos, along with immigration documents and other ancestorial archives, shone new light on branches of the family tree I’d all but cut off. Not long after in 2022, my father passed away, the same year I began photographing rodeos.

My dad and I had been close. I’ve often called him the most important person in my life, and believe I was probably the closest person in his. He was a flawed, troubled man, and not an excellent father, except somehow he managed to be one to me. If we’re talking dualities, I am a pretty equal amalgamation of my parents, and there’s no where that’s more apparent than my personal style. I’ve stolen things from both of them, garments and jewelry and ideas, and have been wearing both my mom’s and my dad’s clothing since I was in elementary school.

Me, wearing my father’s vest on Picture Day, seventh grade, 1993-1994

After my father died, I started wearing his leather cowboy hat to rodeos. I’d been to a couple rodeos before, but as I became more invested in documenting them, I paid closer attention to the dress code and always wear boots and a hat. The leather Stetson, molded to my dad’s small head, fits me perfectly and keeps the dust out my hair. In the three years since I photographed my first event, I’ve begun reaching for my cowboy boots daily, no matter my outfit, no matter the weather.

It’s my father’s feet I see when I get dressed. Quickly into my rodeo journey I felt a familiarity in the denim and leather, in the songs about honky-tonks blaring over the arena speakers, in the red clay dust coating the insides of my nostrils. Parking my Tahoe in a wide grass field makes me think of my dad.

Dad in his leather Stetson, which I now wear to photograph rodeos.

Dad in double-denim and his signature boots receiving chemotherapy

I posted some of these images of my father on Instagram recently, reflecting on how the intersection of attending rodeos and my father’s passing has influenced the way I dress. I think a lot of people assume the former is the greater influence—I did start wearing a helluva lot more denim after I caught the rodeo bug. But it’s stuck year-round because it feels like me, because it feels like my dad.

I participated in a grief interview project maybe six or so months after my father died. The interviewer and I talked about the parts of our parents we adopted as ourselves, the things about them we carry with us. I talked about dating and being single, and how if I meet someone that person will never know my dad, and that makes me said.

“But they will know him,” the interviewer said. “Through the parts of you that come from him.”

Here are some images I took of my father, and some rodeo photos taken at the Bulls & Barrels Beach Rodeo, now in its third year at Virginia Beach. These shots are from the first two years, 2023 and 2024, and were also recently shared on Instagram as I look ahead to the 2025 event this Saturday on the oceanfront.

Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Me at the beach rodeo, 2024. Photo by Dylan McMahon.

The Time for Long Form

January 15, 2025 Lydia Armstrong

The new year is here and this is only my fourth blog post since the last one. My creative process changed a lot in the last twelve months, with some renewed perspectives and priorities, one of which is a return to blogging.

Since I started this particular blog two years ago, I’ve debated how to use it, which tracks. It took me a while to find the direction of my first blog too, an outfit-of-the-day style fashion blog I maintained for a couple years circa 2010 (now defunct, although you can probably find photos from it if you Google hard enough). It also feels like the time for long-form. A lot of friends are pulling away from quick-consumption apps like Instagram and sending invites to Substack feeds, and I also feel the desire for something I can sit a little longer with.

First, a quick update on my last couple posts. About a year ago, I blogged about some plans for 2024, including to significantly limit the purchasing and development costs of 35mm film, one of my two primary creative media. I started out with pretty strict maximums, but halfway through the year some circumstances changed that enabled me to loosen those limits a bit. I still bought considerably less film in 2024 than I typically would have, and subsequently shot a lot less. Having less film on-hand meant being choosier about what I spent it on, forcing me to narrow down which pictures mattered to me. I shot more rodeo than probably anything else, and a few Barbie portraits, and the best surf photos I’ve ever taken. Most excitingly, I started a rudimentary journey photographing the night sky, most of the film of which I haven’t developed yet. Heading into 2025, this curated headspace gave me insight into what projects I wanted to focus on this year.

I also realized how much time and creative energy I have spent on photography in the last few years versus my other major pursuit, writing. It isn’t as public-facing as my photographic endeavors, but I’ve been working on completing a novel for the better part of thirteen years, and have long considered it my most important project even though I pour the least amount of effort into it, year after year. It isn’t going to write itself. I think having refined (for the moment) what it is I want to do with photography has helped me reach a point where I can do less of it. I no longer feel the need to burn endless rolls of film trying to find my voice or my subject or my exposure or whatever it is I’m seeking. I’m a lifelong student, and continuously use projects in photography to teach myself something about the craft. For example, shooting fast-action rodeos in the dark has taught me a lot about my camera’s exposure settings, and my new interest in astrophotography is adding to my knowledge of how my camera processes light. But I can concentrate my efforts on projects like these in smaller doses, and get back to work on the book.

I’ve also been kicking around some ideas for some shorter pieces, creative non-fiction or memoir-style essays about my upbringing. I grew up a bit unconventionally and had some struggles of my own during adolescence, and I almost never write about any of it. Which is kind of unheard for writers, especially one like me who agrees with Nora Ephron that everything is copy. I poach personal stories from every aspect of my life to use in writing, and yet I never write about some of the most eventful parts of my early life. There is a tremendous amount of trauma wrapped up in some of that, and also some hesitation on my part to make certain parts of my life public, but I have felt closer to ready in recent months. There are stories I want to tell, stories I have held back for most of my life, and if my last blog post indicates anything, that’s not the vibe anymore.

Which brings me to my final update—gratitude. Thank you to everyone to left an encouraging comment on my post naming my abuser, and to those who sent supportive messages. I received a lot of really wonderful support from friends, family, and strangers, and not one single message of anything else. It felt incredibly freeing to tell my story. For the first time since ending that relationship, I felt like he truly could no longer hurt me. Thanks for being there for that.

I will leave you with my favorite photo of 2024, taken on Kodak T-Max 3200 35mm film at a Revenge Roughstock rodeo in Doswell, Virginia. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Blog