Bracey, Va., woman finds healing in photographing nature
April 2026
(Dolores Cabaniss photo; inset photo by Nancy Moorefield)
by Laura Emery, Staff Writer
From the sunroom of her Lake Gaston home in Bracey, Va., Nancy Moorefield captures the arrival of spring through the lens of her trusty Canon PowerShot SC70. Warblers and bluebirds perch on fence posts as the season stirs back to life.
The Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative member, an amateur photographer, loves observing the season’s nuances.
“My backyard is a playground for all the beautiful things in nature,” says Moorefield, who relocated to Bracey with her husband, Bodie, 13 years ago from Cumberland County, Va., after retiring.
Moorefield has been submitting photos to Cooperative Living’s Say Cheese column since 2018, and she is never far from her camera. “I think I missed my calling,” she says of her love of photography, which has become a source of comfort. “The camera filled a void that I didn’t even know was there.”
Behind the camera is a woman whose life has been touched by loss but is defined by resilience. She lost her 17-year-old daughter, Melissa, to cystic fibrosis and has recently survived stage 4 cervical cancer. “I’m a little miracle at 78 years old,” she says. “The tumor was huge and was wrapped around multiple organs.” The devastating diagnosis came last year on Aug. 4.
Moorefield was going to let the invasive cancer take its course. She says, “I told everyone, ‘I’ve got more people in heaven than I’ve got here.’”
But she eventually changed her mind. Late last year, Moorefield underwent chemotherapy, radiation therapy, brachytherapy and immune therapy.
“The doctors and nurses at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center in South Hill, as well as in Richmond, were the best. They saved my life,” she says. “On Dec. 29, they told me the cancer was gone.”
Moorefield is still undergoing immune therapy treatments every 21 days, but she is happy to be back behind her camera — though not as often as before. The side effects of her treatments make her physically fragile. But just as the flowers she photographs triumphantly rise in spring, they are a reminder to Moorefield that fragile things still bloom. And the birds that return to her backyard year after year are proof of the beauty in endurance.
She says, “I enjoy sharing the joy of nature with others.”
Explore more of Moorefield’s nature photography in the photo gallery below.
