why i blog...

i had someone ask me recently what made me decide to start a blog. there are multiple reasons, many of which i've told you before. however, i realized that the core reason i've never really shared. let me take you back to 2000. i'm a new mom and a new wife and a college student and trying to keep all the balls in the air. i started attending a women's ministry thing at my church. i thought it would be great to make some friends who also had children since none of my current friends were anywhere near that stage. so i attend this event. i'm looking around at all this well dressed, fabulous, thin women. they have houses full of children and they make their bread from scratch and their children never get snotty noses and they meet their husband at the door in an apron and heels... ok that's probably not true but that's how i perceived it. they were perfect. i, on the other hand, had no idea what i was doing. now had i taken a few minutes to actually talk to these women i would have quickly discovered these notions were not true. but i could only see them through the haze of my own insecurities. so i felt inadequate and as if i didn't belong there and i shut down, because that's what i used to do. i spent those first few years of motherhood with very few friends and even fewer people that i really let in. for fear that if people saw who i really was, they'd be appalled. they'd think i was a bad mother or a terrible wife or an incompetent social worker or whatever. as i progressed to my mid-20's and started to grow up more and learn more about myself i discovered something: we're all in the same boat. our boat may be bigger or smaller, red as opposed to blue or have less children in it... but underneath it all we're moms. we want the absolute best for our children. we cry when they hurt. we think they are the funniest and the smartest and the cutest and we're just sure everyone else is wrong in thinking that about their kids :) if there has been one underlying desire in my life in the last eight years it has been to help women feel good about who they are. not just ok but good. to love their own skin. to feel strong about the kind of woman they are, no matter how different or the same. to support each other in our differences. to be able to look one another in the eye and say "that's not how i do things but i like you anyway!" to walk into a room full of women and not feel fat or uneducated or weird or less than. to know that what i have to offer is me. and that's alot to offer. so that's why i blog. not that you asked :)