In a standard check-in with an old friend via messenger we were talking about how social media helps to paint that perfect lifestyle. I mentioned how my IG is full of beautiful food that I make but on most days since having a baby “my meal is like a handful of crackers, my tea is constantly cold”. I complained about my c-section scar. “Maybe one day I’ll blog about it”, I said casually. “Girl you should!”, she replied.
I had toyed with the idea of blogging about my motherhood experience before, even tossed it around haphazardly to a few people—but something about her excitement came across in a more real way. She suggested that I share my story with a blogging community that she had written for, shared the link to their website and her piece with me. Then, in a matter of moments she tagged me in an IG post asking if they were looking for more submissions. She put me out there. Maybe she knew me better than I think she did. Maybe she knew if she didn’t do something about it in the moment I would let it pass. Maybe she didn’t, who knows. I told her I’d think about it, she told me:
“the world needs to hear more stories”
So, I opened the link to her piece, and I read, then I read some others. They were good—like perfect, honest, powerful pieces. I started to doubt myself. I told her that I didn’t think I wrote well enough for this (somewhere deep inside I probably still do), and she reassured me. When I said I’d think about it more, I didn’t think I would think much about it, honestly. But, something about that conversation stuck with me. Some conversations have that impact on you—it could be the same thing that you have been told 10 times, but that one time, it sticks.
After talking to her, I sat at my laptop and I just wrote the first thing that came to mind. It took me half an hour maybe an hour tops. I didn’t edit it, just wrote my raw feelings. It felt like I was pouring my heart into the keyboard and on to the screen. After re-reading it, I sent it to my husband to her some really, honest feedback. I told him that it was unedited—thought he’d say it was okay. He told me that it was really good. For those of you who don’t know my husband, he is my biggest supporter, but he can be my biggest critic, and I love him for that.
So, with that I thought, maybe I have something here. Over the next couple of days, I sat down and tried to write other things. In fact –make that over the next couple of weeks. But, nothing that I could write could compare to that first article that first story. Something about that rawness, that realness, I could not recreate no matter how hard I tried. I was never as quirky, as honest, as funny as I hoped I would be. I moved on to something else. I threw myself into making a logo, decide on the name of my blog, typical me style—getting so tied up in the little details and making everything so perfect that I essentially paralyzed myself from doing anything else.
I started thinking “maybe I’m not that good of a writer”, “maybe I’m not that good of a creator”, “maybe I’m not as artistic as I thought”, “maybe I should just leave this whole thing alone”.
But, that was and is my biggest issue, I can find a million ways to talk myself out of doing something new, something challenging, something scary, something possibly amazing, something possibly great, something possibly helpful to others, something even possibly helpful to myself. Not because I’m lazy, not because I don’t have the drive or the ambition, although some days I feel like those are my issues, but a lot of the time it is because I don’t think I am good enough, I don’t think I am smart enough, I don’t think my voice is loud enough, I don’t think that I am _______ *blank* enough.
So in creating this blog, in sharing my story, and maybe some stories of others, it lets me know that I am good enough, that my story is good enough –and hopefully you feel that way too. After all, “the world needs to hear more stories”. I hope that you will follow me as I share my stories on this journey of valleys and mountaintops, of scars and crowns!
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