There is something beautiful about sharing your story. Some call it brave, even admirable, while the others look at those who share with furrowed brows. These people may call you an “over sharer.” What’s funny is I have never been one to over share. In fact, if you know me, close friends and ex boyfriends would get frustrated on just how little I would let people in.
I claimed to be a writer.

Writers let people in. We are called to share stories, whether that be our own, another’s, or a character’s. Stories can heal, teach, and move mountains. Stories allow you to look at someone else’s life in a new way, but often times it allows you to read yourself from a third perspective.

I’m inspired by women who people may think “over share.” Women who are brave to put their lives out there. Women who boldly tell their stories that someone, somewhere was just waiting to hear.
Helena Fitzgerald. Kelly Sundberg. Michelle Parise.
Three women whose stories, platforms, and words have inspired this project that I am embarking on. If I am being honest, and that’s the promise I give to you through all of this: full honesty, I am also doing this for myself too. I am not starting this newsletter in an attempt to get exposure or to even use this as a portfolio for future writing endeavors. I am starting this so I can heal. There is a story inside me that needs to be told.

I’ve been told before that I am too young to have a story. That it’s better to go through life and then to look back on the past and write about it. I agree that looking back on a situation in hindsight changes it. It allows you to have more power and you can see more clearly the wrong and the right. But there is a beauty in the presence. There is a beauty in the mess of the confusion of heartbreak. There is a beauty in talking about how you are currently finding your way instead of showing the path.
There is a vulnerability.
And that is something I am learning how to be.
Being vulnerable is strong.
Learning to love, learning to forgive. Not holding on to the parts that anger you but learning from every encounter is strong.
And these are all things I am trying to be.

So, that is what you can expect from these newsletters.
Honesty. Vulnerability. Fleeting Strength.
This isn’t a blog, it’s a letter. It is me opening up my life and thoughts to you. An intimate experience.

If you keep up with this page, there will be posts every so often.
If you subscribe (& commit to a monthly subscription), you will get to read my words weekly and frequently, and those posts will be more raw.

Thank you to all who have supported me in telling my story. Thanks to all who continue who want to read it. For more badass women who tell there stories, check out the women I mentioned above:
- Helena Fitzgerald: https://griefbacon.substack.com + @helfitzgerald
- Kelly Sundberg: https://kellysundberg.com + “Goodbye Sweet Girl” her memoir available 6/5/18.
- Michelle Parise: “Alone: A Love Story” Podcast = http://www.cbc.ca/radio/alone

When I was younger, I thought I would be married by twenty-three. The number sounded sturdy and put together. I stand on wobbly feet: a fifth year at a college that I have outgrown, a self-proclaimed writer who keeps starting but never finishing, and goals so big that they never seem to come in to focus. I am not married at twenty-three, but instead heartbroken. I have no job, but instead just big ideas. I am not put together, but instead still searching for all of the pieces.

As an avid reader, this age is void from novels. We see heroines at sixteen taking down governments, first loves, first times, graduating from high school and seemingly starting your life. But once those graduation caps fly into the air we don’t catch up with our characters until they are married, or divorced for the second time; taking off on trips at forty that they forget to do twenty years ago. The “twenty-somethings” seem to be dominating social media and pop culture, but this formative time hasn’t seemed to translate into a novel we can connect with and read over and over again. Is it because these times just don’t seem as relatable as our sixteen-year-old counterparts? Or is it because sometimes reflecting on this time, or looking at ourselves in the mirror, is just too hard?

Our struggles, our lifestyle, it has all been boiled down to lists of “12 Ways to Get Over Your Ex” or “6 Jobs you Should Have if You Want to Change the World.” We glaze over the nights we have spent drinking a bottle of wine with your best friend from high school talking about how things will never be the same. We don’t talk about what it’s really like to have nights you can’t remember and how you feel the next morning. Everyone says that getting over your first or fifth heartbreak just takes time, but we never discuss how much time that actually took or how you let the shower water run cold from laying on the tub floor for too long, singing softly.

This is my next chapter. I am about to be graduating college. I am coming out of what I thought was a beautiful and romantic first serious relationship. I am going to be not only job searching but soul searching, something I am starting to realize is a lifelong process. My blog that I started a bit ago has more of a faith focus with a lifestyle edge; cookie-cutter, “5 Ways to Recharge Your Faith in 2018.” I wanted an outlet where I could not glaze over this part in my life but to fully submerge myself in it. Words are powerful. Stories are essential. If I am going through this next chapter, I realized maybe I didn’t have to do it alone. Maybe there’s a twenty-something out there who just wants to hear their story told too.