Blogging For Breadcrumbs

Hello, friend, and welcome to my blog! This may or may not be our first introduction, but I’d like to take a moment to thank you for being here. While we’re at it, I’d like to share a bit about why I even started a blog anyway. I love a good “how” and “why” story, myself. I love hearing how someone got somewhere, and why. It gives meaning to the whole big picture.

So for starters, let me introduce you to, well, really, to my heart.  I would be remiss to not acknowledge it. Because, here it is, a little underdressed. Written down before your eyes, in snippets of black and white.  

I’ve been writing since I was a little girl, filling journal after journal with thoughts and dreams, treasures that I find, things that leave an imprint on my heart, and experiences worth remembering.

I even launching a blog on a different platform three years ago. But as we know, life is all about timing, and something about that timing wasn’t quite right. Here I am with two young children, no more time than I had then, and plenty of things to keep me busy.

Yet, this past year I reconnected with my lifelong desire and practice of writing. And not only to write and then tuck it away on a shelf somewhere, mostly hidden, maybe seen again at one point either by me or my loved ones when I’m gone someday. Instead, an intense desire to write and to share.

You know what I think about those desires that you have in your heart? I think that you have them for a reason. I think that the scripture that says “God will give you the desires of your heart” really means that he actually will, or already has, given you the DESIRE. The WANT TO is from a Divine Being that is ultimately Creative and immensely Loving. The actual desire is an invitation to participate in creating something meaningful, to build something with love, on purpose. Dreams and desires have a reason for being in your heart.

What you do with it is up to you. Dreams don’t arise in your sightline for only enriching your daydreams, and they don’t come true without the work and the action towards making them happen.

This past summer I had a junction point of identity. You ever had one of those? A seemingly small moment (to everyone else) that sends shock waves through what you know and believe to be true about yourself? There was a circumstance that did just that. It’s too small of a moment and yet to lengthy of a description to get into now and to retell. And, honestly, it doesn’t matter so much about the particulars. What really mattered was what happened inside of me as a result. It was a matter of the heart, one that set me up to collide again with my dreams.

A small situation directly connected with my current self identity, and subsequent level of self worth. It tipped the internal scales in an uncomfortable way. It happens, doesn’t it? As life evolves, you change roles, add responsibilities, and move through phases, our self identity can go through processes of changing as well, if it needs to, and sometimes whether you want it to or not. This circumstance caught me one year after having my second baby, which as we a whole cluster of changes right there, self identity merely being one of them. How you fit in the world, in your family, your business, your job, your relationships, these all can feel like they teeter upon one another, somewhat like a Jenga puzzle. I’ve never been a huge fan of the game, all of the order slowly turning to instability, the mess, and then waiting for the big fall. Life can feel just like that as one role changes, causing the load to shift, to lean suddenly, or to become more dependent in a new way. It creates tension, redirecting energy, reevaluating loads as well as the direction of the tower itself.

This was how I felt in a way. It was going on under the surface, and one puzzle piece moved rather dramatically, and I had a new situation to assess. No one could see it from the outside. But I felt this all in my heart.

It gave me pause, in discomfort, to ask a few important questions. WHO AM I, now, anyway? Who do I see myself as? What value do I bring to others? What value do I place on my various roles, and what am I doing to best bring meaning to each day?

I sat down to write through the layers, the good, bad and indifferent. When I looked at my life on paper, scrawled out in my messy script, I noted what I was doing with my time, what I wanted to do with my time, what I valued and what was important.

It was a long list, especially the “doing” part. (I’m a doer, a helper on the Eneagram. Though there is a disclaimer on that category that moms of young kids may fall into this category during those care-taking years. Since I’ve been in those “care-taking” years for the last two decades, in my chosen career asa nanny, and now also as a mom, it may be a hazard of the jobs, who knows. But it’s part of who I am and where I am now, still.)

Looking at the list as a whole, at ME as a whole, one passion kept rising the top. Like a balloon filled with air, writing buoyed itself to the top and hung there.

Writing. It’s something that I had been making very little time for, but something that was important to me deeply. It’s the thing that had been patiently waiting for more of a turn as I was busy- making beds and snacks, cuddling babies, running lots of miles, racing, training, cooking, baking, and a hundred other things. Writing was now jumping up, raising its hand, waving it back and forth furiously, like a student in the back row asking for a chance.

When your unbidden dreams jump to the forefront, you take notice.

Well I noticed. Then something happened. Everywhere I turned for the next several days, that dream was highlighted, validated and echoed back to me in so many different ways. It was a symphony, a loud and undeniable broadcast to my heart of “YES!”. It was time to go.

I had a dear friend tell me several years ago that I should write a blog. She thought that I had enough interesting things to share that I should “totally do it.” I believe that this conversation happened the exact day that we sat in my kitchen and told each other that we were both pregnant with our first child, hers planned, mine a surprise. We would both go in to deliver baby girls, a mere eleven days apart. But the blog comment? She was spot on, as usual. But again, timing.

The fast forward to four years later, when this Jenga puzzle if my life was re-evaluated, and I re-found the idea of a blog. What better way to write and to get to share in real time, in ways that were meaningful for me, than to start right now and to begin a blog? The true beauty of the modern age is that we don’t need to wait around for a ‘someday’ when inspiration strikes or to get a book deal or close the sale. We can make it our day TODAY.

So start a blog, I did.

I was honestly pretty much equal parts exhilarated (the extrovert side of me) and scared (the almost exactly equal introvert side), to begin sharing beyond my own circle. I’m learning as I go, setting out on this new adventure, without having all of the other pieces figured out. It’s just like any other journey in life; you’ll never have it all figured out beforehand, and you just have to do it at some point, because it’s the time to do it.

I’m writing for passion and purpose.

There’s something else here, something selfish. See, I’m doing this as much for me as for anyone. When I go back and see what I’ve written in the past, I am reminded of a lesson I already learned, and sometimes forgot, and there’s always something that I need to hear again. When I write, sometimes my most important audience is my future self. The best way that I can help myself moving forward is to channel my inner Hansel and Gretel, and trail of breadcrumbs so I can find my way back. Back to these important things I learn and forget, learn and forget. Writing them down helps me as much as it could ever help anyone else. I am my own best Jimminy Cricket.

 
It’s like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to help me find my way back when I need it.

  Because even on my best days, and certainly on my worst, I need reminding about the extraordinary  and good things that I once knew.   I need to remember what I have found, or risk loosing it along the way.  These moments of knowing are too extraordinary to misplace.  
    So here I am, ordinary me, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. I’ll do my best to share the amazing and wonderful, the regular and difficult. The ordinary and the extraordinary. I do this with hope, knowing that we can see, connect with, and maybe even love our lives a little more.

  So thank you to each of you that has come along on the journey. Thank you for being here, too. I hope that sharing parts of my journey will help you along with yours.