Twenty years ago, I started a series that had no name. It began in New Orleans. I was 22 years old and wanted an excuse to go up to folks that caught my curiosity and capture their story through words and photos. The no-name series took on a life of its own, and I found myself drawn to capturing the stories and photos of people focused on a very purposeful labor. None of them seemed to be doing it for the money. They all shared their journeys of resilience. Their purpose-driven passion seemed like their roadmap, like an internal compass that was guiding them. The series followed me for two decades as I leapt back and forth across the country from Ventura, California, to New York City, to Reno, to San Francisco, to Vermont, to Half Moon Bay, California, back to Vermont, and finally, to Aptos, California. It was inside of me. The people I featured often revealed themselves in serendipitous ways. At first, I didn’t really know why I was collecting their stories or even how their stories were related. Over the years, the series adopted different names and was published in the media outlets I worked at. It took true shape at the Half Moon Bay Review in San Mateo County, California, and with the help of editor Clay Lambert it was known as “Against the Tide.” At the start of the pandemic, it found at new home with Seven Days and Kids VT under the title “Vermont Visionaries.” Twenty years after this no-name series had begun, I was sitting on the beach in Burlington, Vermont. It hit me that the connective thread between all the people I had collected for two decades was their “Labor of Love.” And my husband, who was sitting right next to me during this aha moment said, “And it’s your labor of love too.”