Sometimes you never know exactly where to start. Never know exactly the right words to say to open up the conversation. Never know exactly which task to tackle on the list of chores. Never know exactly which prayer request to offer up first. You can spend forever and day over-thinking it, researching it, worrying about it. Or you just start. Just pick one and go. And hope to hell you picked the right word, the right task, the right prayer. Then like a properly placed domino effect, everything just seems to flow and follow even if a few hiccups occur along the way. You look back then and realize that all that worry was for nothing because in the end, words like “exactly” and “right” are mythical in nature. That outside of math class or that multiple choice quiz, very very few things in life are ever exact or right. They just…are. So we…we just have to start…somewhere…

My name is Amanda. Wife of one amazingly humble man. Mom of 6 amazingly weird and beautiful kids (biological and adoptive). Yes, I’m Catholic and proud of it too. I’m a word-smith. A wannabe actor. And sometimes singer. And comedian. History buff and weed-puller (it relieves stress). Ambivert-leaning-towards-extrovert. I suffer from chronic Ulcerative Colitis. And I battle depression and anxiety daily and likely will all my life.

And this is my first official post on my reincarnated and reinvented blog. A blog I started in 2010 vowing to write in it daily weekly monthly regularly. It was under a different URL and it hit its peak in 2013 with a post that went viral, for me (when you grow up outside a town of 300 and your post gets 800+ hits, I think that qualifies as viral). But I seemed to never be able to get myself to keep it up.

On New Year’s Day 2017, I made up my mind to invest wholly in it. I needed to write. Writing brought me joy and provided an outlet for my creative nature that I so desperately yearned for. I also decided that if I invested more of myself into it, kit might just possibly provide some extra income for our family which would be an additional blessing. My husband was 100% behind me, supportive and cooperative. I was stoked. Energized. Motivated.

For a week.

Then through a series of event and emotions that involved a complex equation of 6 kids, exhaustion, lack of time, misunderstandings, different personalities and approaches to project management, and a serious long-term battle with Influenza A that made the rounds through 7/8 of our household…it fizzled ground to a screeching halt. I had not even written in it ONE TIME. I spent the duration of that week working on and getting caught up in the reformatting to wordpress and the details that shouldn’t have really mattered. All those stories, all those moments, all those feelings and thoughts that ran through my head and screamed at me to be written down just faded into the obscure. And in the end, I hated myself for it. I had failed, at yet one more thing in life. I had once again invested my heart into a dream only to watch it get sidelined by the demands of life that I resented more and more as time crept on. I didn’t even log on to it again for 2 1/2 years.

Until today.

And I am a nervous wreck. I have so much to say, so much to share, and a mission that I feel 100% called to take on with this. But I am my own worst enemy. I over-think, over-analyze, over-worry. I am too caught up in those mythical words “right” and “exact.” I know with all my being how bad those words are to starting out, to achieving goals, to success. But for 40 years, I’ve struggled with understanding that with my heart. I struggle daily to put aside the perfectionist tendencies and ideals that linger inside me.

To let some things go, so others may grow.

I yearn to be able to embrace this. And I try. I do. But it’s a war that must be won battle by brutal battle. And as long as I’m winning more than I lose, I am still making progress. However slow, however tiring it seems, I am still progressing. Still growing.

And this blog…it’s an extension of me. A constant work in progress. As much as I’d love for it to appear perfectly formatted and professional looking right from the start, I have to embrace the fact that it won’t be. And that it’s beautiful just as it is, at every step along the way.

No matter where I am on my journey, I promise you this: I am and forever will be REAL. Even raw. Because I firmly believe that however real, however raw life’s moments may be, it is in those moments where real beauty is seen and from where healing can start.

Now, let’s get this thing rolling. Together.