500 Pieces of Writing

This body of writing marks my 500th blog post.

It seems crazy that I've been doing this for so long and yet, when I think about it, it just feels like what I do, an extension of me.

I started this process almost four years ago when my oldest was 6, my middle daughter was 4 and my youngest was 6 months old.  I needed an outlet.  A place to vent the parts of me that were consumed in care giving or had been back burned for far too long.  I thought if I was lucky, it might last a year and then, I'd move on to the next thing.

To be fair, there's been no rhyme or reason to any of the writings.  Most of the posts have been inconsistent and thematically, tend to revolve around the same things...the beauty and chaos of mothering, the identity of a stay at home crazy woman, the love and loss embedded in the decade of the 30's, the hopefulness and fear of what it means to be 40 and the prayers of a woman who desperately wants to create meaning and to carve out purpose and joy.

So what have I learned?  To begin, I've  reconfirmed a few things that have always felt intrinsic to my soul... I'm in love with the gray area and the parts of life that don't add up.  I seek out stories in me and in others that are formative, that make us who we are but aren't often brought up in polite conversation but are desperate to be told. And to that end, I fancy myself a seeker, a yearner, a truth teller, a woman passionate about uncovering the hidden parts that are both magical and frightening.

I've learned that I love the hell out of cursing.  It's fun, it's cathartic and it's real.

I know that running as much as writing  and writing about running help to manifest both physical and spiritual wellness in every part of my being.  Each run I've taken has lead me deeper into places of discipline, consistency, strength, hope and usually triumph over some facet of the unknown.

I've become mindful that I write to make sense of me in the now and in the after...which is vividly captured in this quote by one of my favorite authors, Anais Nin who says, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."

For me, particularly in this season of my life, there is so much wisdom garnered in reflection.  The kind of parenting that I subscribe to has me knee-deep in the trenches the vast majority of the time and while the days are long, the years are remarkably short.  They really are flying by.  So, if I don't stop and sit with where I'm at, it's gone, really in a flash.  And there's so much here.  So much life to be grateful for.  So many stories and adventures along the way.

So, if there's one thing I regret...it's that I haven't written more.  On any given day, I have a myriad of words, sentences, dialogues wrapped up in my head and surging through my veins.  They come at me while I'm washing the clothes or the dinner dishes, while I'm helping with home work or sinking into a long Saturday morning run, when my youngest is having a colossal melt down at Target or while I'm screaming at the kids to stop screaming at each other.  They're teeming begging to be in the world...and not because I think there are so many readers dying to engage them....but because they are an extension of me.  And if the world needs anything, it needs more authentic pieces of all of us in it.

So, here's to 500 more and another how ever many following.  If you read regularly, thank you for encouraging me and for sharing in the written journey of my life.  It means more than you know.