Hey friends! It's been a LONG time since I've sat down to blog but thankfully snowmageden 2021 has given me some free time so here we are! I've been thinking all morning about a topic, and here is where I've landed. As women we are the greatest multitaskers on planet earth, we do it all, we cook, clean, raise our kid(s), love our husbands, maintain our homes and pursue the career of our dreams (or whatever may be paying the bills, I've been in both spots).
One of the longest running questions asked of women is "can you really have it all?" meaning can you have a perfect home, happy marriage, perfectly behaved children and a fledging career, well in my experience, no you can not. Please keep in mind that this blog is not based on fact, it is just the opinion of one woman trying to do many things, a perfectionist no less, who is feeling less than perfect 90% of the time. Now I am not here to tell you to give up on ANYTHING, or to be a nay-sayer, what I am here to say is that is is OKAY that you can not do everything perfectly at the same time. When I am giving work my all, I worry that my home is suffering from that much needed deep clean (ya know, baseboards, window sills etc), and when I am focusing on my family, there is a thought constantly fluttering in the back of my head that work is being ignored. So what is the answer? The answer is simple and complicated, it's just balance and grace. Balance to give all the parts of your life bits of yourself when you can and grace to know that you will not be perfect, that you will not effortlessly balance all of the tasks and jobs like they seem to do on Instagram. You will likely not look like a model when you are cleaning those baseboards and you probably won't be smiling either.
Now back to that big topic, "having it all", previously I said you can not have it all, and you can't have it all PERFECT, you'll drive yourself crazy, but what you can have is imperfect perfection. You can have an amazing job that makes you excited to get up in the morning, you can have a beautiful marriage with your person, and sweet little angel babies that make your heart swell in ways you never thought possible, you can have all of it, but there will always be something taking a backburner while something else is out front. Speaking from personal experience only I can say that I am living my dream life, my business is successful, my marriage is strong and I have raised one absolutely amazing daughter who inspires me everyday, but I have struggled almost every step to this spot and I am still struggling. I struggled when I was waitressing for 15 years, feeling horrible to miss watching the fireworks with my daughter, or cancelling dinner because I had to go to work, I struggle now finding ways to turn my work brain off to truly focus on my family. There is an old phrase that says "nothing worth having ever comes easy" or some version of that and its been around forever because no truer statement has been made, this beautiful life you are building will not come easy, marriage is work, raising kids is work, building a career is work and keeping that beautiful HGTV decorated home is work too, but at the end of the day you get to decide what it means to YOU to have it all! We all have different goals, dreams, challenges and exceptions, there is no one size fits all version of life. I count my blessings everyday that I get to live this life, I get to connect with and hopefully inspire women, I get to be creative, and I have be best team mates at work that let me do my dream job, and on the days when that dream job is making me want to quit, I have to push a bit harder to be thankful lol, I'm married to my best friend who also happens to be my business partner, my daughter is happy and well adjusted and I'm trying very hard to let gratitude not perfection be the lead in my life.
I hope you've enjoyed this little read, I do intend to spend more time working on our blog, it's something I've wanted to do for such a long time but as I said, time is tight, not just for me but for all of us! Let me know in the comments what you think of this blog, and what you would like to see for future blogs!