Between the weddings, the bar mitzvahs, the daily shoots that peppered her schedule, Lynette Johnson's life was anything but calm to begin with. But who knew it could get any crazier? "Oh, my God," she says. "It's huge. It never ends."

In the six months since we first told you about Johnson's work photographing terminally ill children for their parents, her life has changed dramatically. People walk up to her now and ask, are you that woman? The one we saw on national TV? Or read about in People magazine? "I do have a bit of a distinct haircut," she says.

But if celebrity has been unnerving for her — and more so for her less-public husband — it's her work and mission that have prospered, driven by a nationwide response exceeding her grandest expectations. In sifting through sorrow to capture, and validate, the short but treasured lives of infants threatened by death, it's clear Johnson has touched a chord among parents grateful to have their losses recognized.

"On behalf of all parents who have suffered the agony of losing a precious child," wrote one Arkansas woman in response to the blog Johnson began in July, "I just want to thank Lynette for shining a light on the way our culture approaches grieving parents. We are never the same and though we may have other children, someone is always missing in our family photos, from our dinner tables, family vacations, and all of the moments and milestones we mark in our lives."

What they appreciate, parents tell her, is her willingness to treat their "angels" with honor and dignity. "The death of a baby makes everyone else so uncomfortable," another woman wrote. "You are a truly kind and wonderful woman for allowing us to share our angels with the world."

Johnson has appeared in People magazine and on National Public Radio and "The Today Show." She's been asked to talk to junior-high and high-school students about grief, to keynote hospital fund-raisers, to address a hospice group in the Midwest. "By the end of the year, I'll have spoken to 2,000 people," she says.

Moved by the experiences of women close to her who'd lost babies of their own, she'd quietly begun donating her services to parents of terminally ill children some years ago through a contact at Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center. At first, she worked with two or three families a year.

But as national exposure brought requests from more and more parents, she recently blurted to someone that at most she'd do one a month, no more. That very day, she found herself committing to two a month. In the last month, she did four. "I'm just burning my candle at both ends," she says.

She's traveled to Oklahoma, New Jersey and Canada to honor parents' requests, and along the way expanded her work to older kids — a 17-year-old boy, an 11-year-old girl.

Realizing there was no way she could handle the costs of her in-kind services alone or the logistics of managing donations, she started a foundation, Soulumination, to try to keep up. The foundation recently earned nonprofit status; more information is available on the Web site, www.soulumination.org.

Through Soulumination, she hopes not only to continue offering her services for parents, but also to provide education about respecting grief itself — through lectures, an eventual film project and events such as an upcoming exhibit of her project's work at Seattle's St. Mark's Cathedral. The show is set to open Oct. 30.

She's keeping a list of local photographers who can spell her should she be too busy to get to every family. Meanwhile, she's hoping through Soulumination to mentor a network of photographers who have expressed an interest in mirroring her work.

Microsoft and Corbis have pledged support, she says, and this summer, eWomenNetwork, a networking organization for female business owners, presented her with its first Humanitarian of the Year award and a check for $3,000 at its national conference in Dallas.

"I never knew that doing what seemed to be the simplest little act would start to change the face of grieving in this country," she says. "... It's so obvious to me that [this work] is what I'm supposed to be doing."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com