Hello.

This is a story about a 38 year old woman who once used to write a "mommy blog" back when it (she thought) was much cooler and there were far fewer platforms to promote oneself on. She wrote daily and dutifully and found a lot of satisfaction in writing just to write and mothering just to mother. She sold vintage baby clothes online and went on long walks with her first born. She had a second child and experienced a type of overwhelm not previously known to her and so she put away the long walks and the daily habit of writing and stopped listing things on Etsy.

And then she blew up her life as she knew it.

But this is also a story about all the pain and messiness and healing and joy and loneliness and despair and regeneration and confidence that came from listening to her gut and her heart, and what happened when she stopped drinking alcohol long enough to actually hear them. This story shouldn't be too unfamiliar to any woman who reads personal blogs, or has experienced some sort of motherhood, or listens to We Can Do Hard Things, or is rooted in recovery of some sort, or is a fan of Brene Brown, or has risked deep discomfort and uncertainty by walking away from the even the deeper discomfort of compromise and inauthenticity to experience the tremendous joy of being seen in any relationship: parental, romantic, friendship, or -perhaps the most profound and important of them all- self.

With no formal writing practice for nearly ten years -unless you count sobbing drivel or daydreamy dribble into her personal journals- there is a strong resistance to not start writing and to tell some story of how she doesn't deserve to do it because it has just been too long and there are SOOO many other good and inspiring writers out there writing about the exact same middle-age, divine feminine shit. But if there's one thing she's learned, it's to listen to those nudges, those persistent annoying thoughts in the corner of one's brain, that are telling you what is next. Maybe "go" or "sit" or "move your body" or "give that child a hug" or "plan that adventure". For her it says all of those things but most loudly it says "write".

Here she goes.

And this is the last she will write to you in the third person.