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Hi, Me Again!

Hi, Me Again! What happened?

Hi friends!

It has been quite some time since I have been on the blog. Since August to be exact. We’ve got some catching up to do! The plan is to get back to it and I’m so excited, but I figure, today, I’ll just give you an update/snapshot of the last several months of my life and maybe a little explanation as to why I’ve been MIA.

Rewind back to August of 2022 when I went to New York. I had the time of my life, came home, contracted COVID from my husband who got it from work, and was then stuck quarantining for ten days. At that point in time, I realized I had been in go go go mode basically all year long. Between working about 90 hours a pay-period and travelling in-between along with all other things life, I hadn’t really sat down by myself and reflected on much. So, I took advantage of the quarantine and decided to do so. In the process of sitting on my back porch one morning with a cup of coffee and my thoughts, I had a pretty huge mental breakdown. There were some feelings that had been piling up in me over the course of the year that I had been ignoring and suddenly, those feelings came rushing to the surface. I felt like a big gaping wound open to a lot of dirt and grime. It was nasty, painful, and very deep; I had no idea how to navigate any of it. After opening up to my husband about said emotions, we decided therapy was the best option. So, I started therapy, and everything else went on pause. I dropped down in hours at work, I stopped travelling so much, I quit committing to things that were stealing energy from me and cut back on anything that was causing me anxiety. At that time, I started doing really hard work on the woman inside.

Yall are probably wondering what these said emotions that I am talking about are. It was a compilation of a lot of things and truly I think it started with the blog. You see, since graduating nursing school in 2021, for the first time in my life, I had nothing huge to focus on. Nothing was distracting me. I had graduated with my bachelors degree, I was married, I had my “big girl” job, I was no longer responsible for raising my sister as she’s a grown adult, my husband and I bought a house, and financially I was stable for the first time ever. It felt like life was the best it had ever been. The problem is though that I couldn’t keep hiding from or running from the things that should have been affecting me all along, many years prior to now. I’m not sure if I ran from my past as much as I just didn’t ever devote time to really think about it, but boy did I start thinking about it when I launched The Libbing Room. This blog has always been my dream. My life story is one I’ve told countless times whether it be to others at church camp as a kid, to my college friends, or in small groups at church as an adult, sharing with my husband over the years when we were dating, or just to the random friend that wanted to get to know me. It rolled off my tongue with no real gravity. I knew deep down I was and am meant to share my story and specifically some of the deepest darkest parts of my story because as most of you have read in previous posts, I am very passionate about sharing our stories, the things we don’t talk about, so that others and ourselves don’t feel so alone. To me, our stories are what make us human and connect humanity. What I learned though when writing my story out in chapters for my blog and for an audience is that the process was much harder and way more intimate than a conversation said out loud between me and a few people. As I was writing chapter by chapter, I had to devote a significant amount of time to remember the things I just truly hadn’t given much thought to…. ever. There were details I ended up writing that I had never said out loud to anyone. There were flashbacks I had that surfaced out of nowhere when sitting down to write chapters One through Five. There were memories I began remembering for the first time since I was a child. Each chapter took no shorter than ten hours to compile and I was processing through many of those memories for the first time as I was writing them and before fully processing anything, I would hit “publish” and my 150 subscribers were reading my memories alongside me all while I had just remembered those deep memories the day before. That was daunting and with each chapter I wrote, the more daunting it became until I started having full blown panic attacks. On the flip side of things, there were other emotions that came along with this. I remember when I wrote the post about being a Christian, I had SO MUCH anxiety. There’s a lot to unpack here and I probably won’t get into all of it today but basically, announcing to a group of people that I am a specific label, a label that doesn’t have a great reputation in this day and age, was incredibly debilitating. That launched a whole new side to my anxiety that I had never in my life dealt with. Why am I a Christian? Why do I believe what I believe? Why am I so nervous to tell the world this is what I am? Why do I have so many negative feelings about it? I feel myself even now having anxiety typing this out because half of my subscribers are people I have previously gone to church with or family and friends that are deeply connected to me due to a bond over our faith. I don’t want to give anyone the opportunity to jump to any conclusions just because I stated that I questioned my faith. Personally speaking, questioning my faith at the age of 29 was one of the most freeing things I have ever done for myself. It is also the hardest thing I have ever done. These two things combined sent me into a very lonely spiral of soul searching for months. Anxiety and depression were very real, and therapy is what it took for me to breathe. I knew at that time, the blog had to be put on the back burner for a bit.

That was a hard decision. I felt like I showcased my dream to the world and had failed epically. I felt like people probably mocked how I was so gung-ho and then all of a sudden, I was silent. I had to fight those thoughts like you wouldn’t believe, but in the end, it didn’t matter. I had to take care of me, and I knew The Libbing Room would be here when I was ready for it. Secretly, despite the insecurity, I knew you all would be too. I still can’t thank you all enough for the amount of support you have given me.

Fast forward to now and I am in a much better place. Therapy has done wonders and my husband has been an incredible partner through it all. I am ready to jump right back into The Libbing Room but with a few variations from when I initially launched. I don’t have a lot of goals this time around- I am basically choosing to take the pressure off. I love to write, and I do it for fun and as a form of release, but I learned that these posts take way more time than I ever realized they would so instead of promising you six posts a month, I am going to post when I feel like it. (which is often! But I no longer want to slap a number on it.) I also still intend to keep my life story on pause. I have some more therapy to work through before I dive into that again. I realized though, that that doesn’t mean I can’t post at all! There are other things I would love to share and write about!

As for other updates, I’M PREGNANT. Brad and I are so excited to be welcoming a little baby girl into this world come early October! Her name is Evelynn Pearl, which we have had picked out since 2017! We both thought it was for sure going to be a boy so when the powder cannons popped pink, we were shocked and also SO excited to finally get to have our sweet Evelynn Pearl that we have been dreaming about since year one of our relationship!

Thank you all for still being here on this journey with me and reading along. I’m so excited to be back and I hope you all are excited for me to be back as well!! Stay tuned for more to come!

Enjoy this picture of Brad's very surprised face that it is A GIRL!

All Things New York

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All Things New York

Brooklyn Bridge

About a month ago I was sitting at one of my favorite places in Wichita Falls with two of my favorite people. We were enjoying flat bread and wine when my friend Hannah looked at me and Maddie and said, “I have several days off in a row in August, and I want to go on a trip somewhere”. One thing led to another and next thing you know we booked a trip to New York City.

New York City was fascinating. It felt like I was in another country to be honest. It just didn’t feel real. I heard just about every accent imaginable. There were Americans but also foreigners all over the place. The way of life was unbelievably different than anything I have ever experienced in Texas; fast paced is an understatement. The buildings were massive, and they went on and on for miles. The different sections of New York (Uptown, Midtown, and Downtown) were all vastly different but also not. Uptown felt fancier, pricier, and some areas had a hipster feel to them. Downtown felt grungier except on the popular streets where it just felt mega touristy. Midtown felt simpler, like where people were doing everyday life. But it all felt fast paced, busy, business like, and just completely different than Texas. New York had this ability to make me dream. Yall know that famous song by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys that says “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do. Now you’re in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you. New York, New York, New York, New York.” I have never felt a song to be truer. Walking the streets of New York made me a big dreamer. Well, I already am a big dreamer but for some reason, it made me feel like my dreams could come true. It made me want to work even harder at all my goals. Why is that? What is it about big, tall buildings, people of every kind, and massive electronic billboards with bright lights and advertisements that make it seem like anything is possible? I don’t really know. But New York changed me. It was incredible and fascinating and honestly just one of the best times. I was in awe the entire time and texted my husband basically begging him to let us drop everything and move there. I will be going back, and I encourage anyone that has the chance to take a trip! If you do so, this post is for you. Below is a downloadable PDF with lots of details about what we did, where we ate, and some recommendations if mine! Click the link!

All Things New York Download

How’d you lose all that weight? Part 2.

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How'd you lose all that weight? Part 2.

Surgery took less than thirty minutes. The Gastric Sleeve is a laparoscopic procedure. The pain was minimal when I woke up. The worst part was the anesthesia. Due to having no thyroid, anesthesia hits me really hard and takes a long time to fully wear off. Before leaving the hospital, they have you drink 8 ounces of water and walk 20 laps around the nurse’s station. It was incredibly hard to do this because I couldn’t stay awake to save my life. Nonetheless, I got it done and they sent me on my way.

For a week after surgery, I was on a clear liquid diet and every week after that I could advance my diet as tolerated. So, from clear liquids to full liquids to soft foods all the way to a regular diet. It took about 5 weeks for me to start eating meats again but by meats I mean really soft meats or meats mixed with a sauce of some sort such as chicken salad, tuna, or ground beef. The rapid change in diet is absolutely the hardest part of this surgery. It forces you to completely rebuild your relationship with food. For about 3 months post-op I could only eat around 3-4 bites before feeling stuffed. It was the strangest thing and the most infuriating thing. I would feel like I was starving, take three bites of mashed potatoes, and feel like I had just eaten a 16oz steak with two sides. So full, that I would often times feel miserable. In the beginning, you also have to retrain yourself in how fast you can eat. I don’t think I understood just how fast we all eat our food until eating three bites in one minute caused me to puke my guts up. I ended up having to set a three-minute timer in between each bite and I mean start the time after swallowing and not take a single bite until the timer went off. This was torturous. ESPECIALLY when I wanted to advance my diet so bad due to being on only liquids for two weeks. I didn’t want to wait three minutes in between each bite. I wanted to scarf it all down!! There were days that I bawled because I just wanted a normal meal. After bariatric surgery, every single bite needs to count if you want to ensure you are nourishing your body. I could take three bites of a cookie or three bites of a protein bar. Obviously, the protein bar is what I needed, but when you give up sugar cold turkey, it’s not the easiest decision to pick the protein bar. This is truly how the surgery caused me to reform my relationship with food. I was literally eating to live, not living to eat. When I made unhealthy choices, I felt it big because I would become malnourished experiencing extreme fatigue, weakness, and even bone and joint pain. If I wasn’t getting enough protein in, I would feel so weak and so tired. It is hard to put into words just how much healthy food choices mattered right after surgery. I also had to train myself to eat every single hour for the first three months. They don’t recommend this long term but, in the beginning, you can only eat so little that if you eat every four hours like the normal person you are only consuming around 400 calories or less a day. Therefore, it’s important to take small bites as often as possible without taking them too close together because that could cause you to feel miserable. It was a balancing act to say the least and a learning curve is an understatement.

When you are raised in our culture, everything revolves around food no matter how healthy you are, and I just didn’t realize how much I would miss out on once I couldn’t eat much anymore. My husband and I had to find other things to do besides go to dinner for date night. I wasn’t supposed to be drinking caffeine so I couldn’t enjoy a morning cup of coffee anymore. I wasn’t allowed to drink carbonation so the once-a-month Dr. Pepper I would have for a treat was out the window. I couldn’t tolerate bread, rice, or pasta because they were too dense of a food to eat when 80% of your stomach is removed. Some meats were hard to digest so there I was limited too. If I went to a wedding shower and chose to eat cake or fruit over meat, I wouldn’t get the amount of protein in that I was supposed to for the day. You can no longer tolerate to chug water because it will hurt your stomach, so you’re told to sip on water all day long but when you’re busy at work, on your feet all day, that feels impossible. You also can’t drink for thirty minutes before and after a meal because drinking fills your stomach up but also will hurt your stomach if you mix food and fluids together. Remember when I said that the first three months, I was eating bites every hour? Yeah, so I didn’t get my fluids in at first either and I was dehydrated as heck. I landed myself right back in the hospital just to get IV fluids so that I could be hydrated and then utilized an IV infusion clinic in the city that I live in just to get fluids in. About six months in, most patient’s hair begins to fall out just from a lack of protein since surgery and a huge change in caloric intake. My hair was coming out in chunks, and I spent many showers bawling. Not to mention the mental toll it takes to just no longer enjoy anything that you used to eat because you literally cannot eat more than a bite and that bite cannot contain any dense carbs. So tacos, pizza, burgers, rolls, spaghetti, alfredo, queso, soda, energy drinks, coffee, cake, cookies, etc? GONE. It’s not like I was indulging in all of those foods every week before surgery but they literally were not an option after surgery and that was way harder than I expected. Any comfort I found in food before or any positive thing I celebrated with food before; that was no longer an option and if I caved and tried even two bits of the things above I was miserably sick. To say it sucked and was the hardest thing I have ever had to do is an understatement.

But then….

The weight came off, I had energy, my knees and back didn’t hurt, I could wear cute shoes again for more than an hour, my hair began to grow back, I slowly was able to reintroduce all my favorite foods but, in a way where they didn’t control me. I had self-control over how much I would eat and had the ability to put it down once I was full. I now am able to eat whatever I want, and I also can drink enough water throughout the day. My skin issues started to resolve and my diabetic A1C came down. I was able to jog again without being in pain and lifting weights didn’t hurt my body anymore. I gained confidence at a healthy level and vowed to never ever take my health for granted again. All of the sucky things I listed above were so so so so worth it to me. I would do it again ten times over to feel how I feel now which is… healthy. I feel healthy. Thyroid cancer stole my health, and I did what it took to get it back. In the meantime, I learned some lessons about self-control and our culture’s ability to make food an idol. I no longer live for the next meal and am not always looking forward to what I’m going to eat next. I can say no to a cupcake and feel totally okay with that instead of feeling deprived. Grilled chicken sounds delicious to me when before I would feel so frustrated that I had to eat grilled instead of fried just for a chance to lose a pound. I hired a personal trainer, and she is incredible. She has taught me so much about nutrition and moving my body. My entire perspective on my body, working out, and eating habits have changed so much for the better and I truly think it is all because I took a stand to do what I needed to do for myself. I remember feeling so fearful of what others would think of my decision and now I think about how miserable I would still be if I had allowed that fear to hold me back. I just encourage every single one of you to always do what is best for you despite the opinions of others because truly at the end of the day other people’s opinions of you are none of your business. I heard that quote once and it just hit me down deep. We cannot live our lives out of fear of what others think because then we would miss some of the greatest opportunities this world has to offer us.

I am 100lbs down from the day of my surgery and 120lbs down from my heaviest weight. The gastric sleeve changed my life, and I am so happy I went though with it. With that being said, dinner is ready so I’m about to go enjoy a taco, rice, and beans. See? I promise it didn’t stay hard forever. 😊

Please be kind to me. These are the most vulnerable pictures I have ever posted on the internet.

Pre-op, Two days before surgery.

Pre-op, Two days before surgery

Post-op, one year from surgery

How’d you lose all that weight?

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How'd you lose all that weight? Part 1.

March 2021, Photographer: Melissa Koss Photography

On June 14^th of last year, I followed through with a decision that changed my life. I had the gastric sleeve. I hesitate to talk about my previous weight, current weight, and what I did to get here for a few reasons that I want to address first before sharing my story. I used to be the girl who read other people’s posts about their weight loss journey, and I would feel everything from bitterness, jealousy, to anger, and comparison. I was happy for that person but envious would be an understatement. Reading their posts never brought me joy and it typically sent me into a weeklong frenzy of sadness and a mental battle to say the least. This is why it has taken me an entire year to open up about this decision I made for myself. I never want to cause the feelings I talked about above for someone else. Talking about weight is not easy and I never want to make someone feel like they are less worthy or not good enough because of their weight. I don’t want people to read my story and think that my opinion is that being “skinny” is better. There are a lot of reasons why I chose to get weight loss surgery and it wasn’t all for the desire to be small, but I used to read peoples weight loss journeys and that’s all I got out of it no matter what they said, and I let it define my worth. So, if you are reading this post and you are also struggling with your weight, please know that I see you and I hear you. I understand you and I hope you hear my heart in this. You are worthy despite what the scale says and being a certain size does not make you worth more or less.

I have never considered myself to be “skinny” by any sense of the definition, but I have always been some sort of fit. In high school I was in athletics and although I wouldn’t have considered myself an athlete, I chose to be in it in order to have someone force me to workout. I also was a cheerleader from 3^rd grade to my junior year and then again in college for a short time. In college, I went to the gym often and really focused on my physique as much as possible. I haven’t always made the smartest decisions diet wise but in between bad decisions I was crash dieting, meal prepping, and working out. That kept me at a healthy size most of my late teens and early twenties.

College Cheer, 2013

Typical gym selfie, 2015

Sophomore year of college, 2014

Then, unfortunately, in 2017 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer which resulted in the removal of my entire thyroid in March of that year. If you don’t know anything about the thyroid, know this. It plays a very key role in a person’s metabolism and hormone regulation. I had always heard people talk about gaining weight due to thyroid issues but never really understood it until I was in their position. Yes, I was on thyroid medication to regulate my hormones (and still am/will be for the rest of my life) but the medication just does not function the same or do near as well as one’s actual thyroid organ. From November of 2016 (when I noticed that something was not right and went to the doctor) to September of 2018, I gained 120lbs. That is considered very rapid weight gain and my body definitely felt it.

June, 2019 (at my heaviest)

December , 2019

February, 2020

I was miserable. I began having skin issues that is brought on by rapid weight gain in which I am still seeing a dermatologist for. I went to Vegas on a family vacation to visit my brother-in-law who was stationed there and after walking 30,000 steps in Vans, I gained stress fractures in both of my feet in which I now still have to wear special inserts in my tennis shoes for. I had worn Vans to a day at Six Flags a few years before and never had an issue, but the doctor said that my feet could not handle the weight of my body anymore without supportive shoes due to how overweight I had become. I began having hormonal issues that caused skin boils, skin tags, and facial hair. The straw that broke the camels back for me was when I was told that I was pre-diabetic. Was I miserable in clothes and with the way I looked because society drills it into us that being skinny is best? Absolutely. But my misery went far deeper than just my looks. Yes, of course there were days that I cried my eyes out because I felt like I looked horrible in every single outfit I owned but there were also many days I cried because my feet, knee, and back pain were unbearable or because there I was at 26 plucking chin hairs over something that I truly felt I couldn’t help. The realization that I couldn’t shave often anymore or wear deodorant because I would get an ingrown hair that would turn into a skin boil was also terrible to deal with and made me more self-conscious than I could ever communicate. I state these very real, raw, and quite honestly embarrassing moments for me to show that not all of my misery was based on my size. There were days I got dolled up and felt pretty but beauty is fleeting no matter what size we are. The pain I felt in my body and the physical symptoms I was experiencing were awful. I truly just wanted to feel my age again, have my health back, and also my energy. I think we as females can agree that it doesn’t matter if you’re a size 2 or a size 24, there are days where we all feel horrible about ourselves. For me though, I had lost my health. I remember sitting in one of my best friend’s living room after buying a pair of jeans because I had outgrown all of my other ones and saying “The size of these jeans do not lie. My size has gotten out of control, and it has absolutely affected my health in ways unimaginable.” All while choking through so many tears.

It was at that point that I made big changes. I started tracking most all of my food and started making way healthier choices. I wouldn’t say that my diet prior to this was terrible but I began taking my diet way more serious and eating clean. I used a system called “itrackbites” which is similar to Weight Watchers but far more affordable. I had a friend who was an accountability partner, and we were actually great accountability partners; not the kind that let “cheating” slide. I hesitate to say cheating here because I no longer feel that “cheating” is a good term to use when it comes to a healthy relationship with food but back then, that is exactly how I viewed it. After speaking with my doctor, I made a goal to lose 60lbs in two years. Yes, that is very slow, but it was realistic for me in my position with a low metabolism and if I lost more than that, then YAY what a celebration! So, for two years, while in school to achieve my BSN, I was pretty health conscious. I wasn’t perfect, don’t get me wrong; but I was doing a lot of things right and should have lost quite a bit of weight. Unfortunately, though, in two years, I only lost 18lbs. I plateaued about a year and a half in and after six more months of trying I lost not a single pound more.

2020: 18lbs down: Photographer: Catherine Nicole Photography

At this time, I was struggling pretty bad with anxiety. I visited my primary doctor for this reason and when he asked me, “What triggers your anxiety?”, I broke down about my health. The breakdown was unexpected, but I couldn’t control it. I had been working so hard and felt so defeated. This is when he mentioned weight loss surgery. I had thought about it before but to be honest, never thought my support system would go for it, and also continued to block it out as an option out of fear of what others would think about it. Sounds silly, I know. We all talk about how other people’s opinions don’t matter but most of the time, that is easier said than done, right? Either way, my doctor talked to me about it and recommended it. He gave me some print outs about the Gastric Sleeve, and I went on about my way. Looking back, I remember feeling hope for the first time in a long time when I walked away from that appointment. I brought it up immediately to my husband as soon as I got home. We did research, talked about it, prayed about it, and also spoke with some of our closest people about it. I received nothing but support. One thing led to another, and I landed myself in an operating room three months later. June 14^th of 2021, my life changed for the better. Story to be continued in Part 2, coming soon.

Life as Planned

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Oh man. Life as planned. Such a funny concept. We all have so many plans and there’s got to be someone out there reading this who is like me in that you like to plan every. single. detail and sometimes, I think life throws our plans right back in our face and laughs at us and says, “HAHAHA You thought!!!” Well my friends, that’s been my life ever since launching this blog. To be honest, I found myself getting so incredibly frustrated this afternoon at this blog. Not the blog itself, I LOVE having this space. But man, everything that can go wrong since launching, has. That’s probably dramatic and not true at all. There are much worse things that could have happened but it sure feels like every little thing has gone wrong. So in the midst of my frustration I just started laughing and thought to myself, “This right here would make a good blog post.” Because who on earth can’t relate to feeling like every piece of your well thought out plan goes wrong? I’m pretty sure not a single person can say they have never experienced that.

The day I launched The Libbing Room, I woke up sick as a dog. I called into work and went to the doctor. Tested negative for all the things but felt just downright awful. It was a blessing to be home while I launched though, so there was the silver lining. That sickness then turned into 14 days of not feeling well. From headaches and chest congestion to coughing and nose blowing, I was unwell. Finally got on an antibiotic and truly, it didn’t help much either but life goes on. I released Chapter One and it felt great but I had plans to post again, the week after Chapter One was released. I knew the website would be down for a day when switching the domain from .org to .com but I didn’t know that it would be down for an entire weekend so my plan to post went out the window. Then, when the blog was back up and running I posted on social media letting everyone know and asking people to subscribe and telling everyone a new post would be here on Monday. All to be met with dear friends and family letting me know that the subscription button was not working and as of right now, as I am typing this, it is still not working. I won’t go into all the details because the behind the scenes of website building may bore some of you but yall. IT IS A FIASCO. People who do it have to be so so smart. I am not one of them. I hired someone. lol It is all so intricate and there are many layers to a website. It has blown me away.

Tonight, I truly put in the work myself to try and figure out why the subscription portion of my blog is not working and after a few hours of research I was quite literally at a loss and so incredibly frustrated. So then came the decision- “Do I still release a post tomorrow while an aspect (a very important aspect of that) of my website is down? Or do I push back yet another post until it’s figured out?” That thought process led me here, writing this post.

Sure, I could push it back and I could get on socials and announce to everyone why I am not keeping my end of the deal by releasing a post on Monday like I said I would. Sure, I could wait until everything is perfect and there are no glitches and to be honest, the perfectionist in me wants to do just that but also, the insecure thoughts entered my brain as well. “I’ve already had to announce that the website is down this last week, I’ve only released one post since launch day, and now my subscription button isn’t working. What If i get on socials and announce why I’m not posting and get judged? Or what If I still post but more people notice that the subscription button is down? Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. What the heck do I do??” I mean I could go on and on about the rhetoric that was racing through my brain which only brought frustration and disappointment.

So here I am, deciding to post anyway. Why? Because my entire goal with this blog is to be real all the time and this is real. My website has a pretty big glitch and I am not going to wait until it’s perfect to release another writing. Judged or not judged, it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t perfect and it never ever goes as planned. I want all of my readers to hear me loud and clear when I say, “AND THAT’S OKAY”. (speaking this to myself as well) Whether it’s the timeline you had about graduating college, getting married, having kids, or something simpler like not being able to wash your car when you planned because it’s supposed to rain. Or maybe there’s a different crowd reading this. Maybe your kiddo isn’t picking up on reading as fast as you planned for them to, or maybe your graduating senior doesn’t want to go to college the way you had always planned for them. Maybe your savings account doesn’t look as built as you had hoped by this time or maybe your marriage isn’t always as lovely as you had once dreamed about when you were little. I could list so many examples and I’m sure you could think of some yourself. I am here to say that everything works out in the end. I am not trying to dismiss heartache in the areas of where some people have had to wait a really long time for their “plans” to come to fruition but what I am saying is that so many of my disappointments in life- the disappointments that had me devastated, heartbroken, or downright stressed at the time- have all worked out up until this point. Not all of them have worked out the way that I envisioned they would and not all of them worked out with a pretty little bow tied on top, but they sure did work out and I imagine this hiccup with my subscription button will work out too.

I hope you hear me when I say that plans are just that. They are plans and they are good to have but let’s work on loosening up our tight grip that we have on all the marvelous plans we have set out before ourselves. Sure, plan away, make goals, and try to obtain them but when they fall through or don’t look exactly how you always envisioned, I know that having a looser grip will make the let down a little softer. I am having to learn that myself, dear friends. Lets learn it together.

PS: When deciding to write this post, I inserted the title and my next step is to insert a picture. I kid you not when I say that I could not get a single picture to upload. I got an error warning on every single picture I tried for various different reasons. That has never happened before with any of my pictures on this website. This is what I mean by every. little. thing. going wrong and it just feeling like you can’t get anywhere. So finally I said, “Who cares? No one needs a picture anyway”. So, if by the time you’re reading this, there still is no picture it is because I could not figure it out and I still decided to post anyway and if there is a picture, well then you know that life decided to be on my side for a second. 🙂

Hello World!

Snapshots

I am finally sitting down to write. For years now, I have always known that I wanted to write. I’ve had this big dream tucked away in my heart but was still working toward becoming a nurse, so the dream continued to stay tucked away.

Recently though, after graduating nursing school the dream of wanting to start a blog and actually start writing has leaped full force right in front of my face screaming very loudly for me to start actually doing something about it. It’s been wild. I wake up thinking about it. I go to sleep thinking about it. But this dream is so incredibly big that it’s almost daunting. Intimidating.

What if I fail?

What if people don’t like what I write?

What if I say something that people disagree with and I get cancelled?

What if people judge me for sharing too much?

What if, What if, What if?

Fear. It’s really the damndest thing. It simultaneously stops us in our tracks but also causes us to run. Well, I’ve been stopped in my tracks for far too long and running at the same time so here I am on a random night in December finally writing.

The plan tonight was to hang out with my older sister, wrap Christmas presents, and play Elf in the background. Then she told me that she had a test to take for school and although she was so apologetic for “ruining our plans”, it was the one thing that motivated me to break out this computer and write my first blog entry.

So, hello world. If you are reading this, I am so so thankful. Thank you for giving me a chance, for visiting my website, and for reading my thoughts that are quite honestly all over the place.

The trajectory of my writings are subject to change but its currently on my heart to share my life story and experiences in order for others who may have experienced similar things to not feel so alone. I want to be the most real, very genuine, and incredibly authentic. I want to share my mistakes, my hurts, my past, my abuse, and the story of redemption and grace that comes along with all of those things. I want to tell others how worthy they are and show them that they are never too far gone. I want to be relatable and help those see their worth, their ability, their future with a new light.

I want to create a safe place for those that need a place to rest, release, and relate. So, here goes nothing.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!