Blog-vember: Blogging every day for the month of November

Like most good 6th grade girls, I was an angsty pre-teen. I liked boys who didn’t like me back. I worried about my thick, black eyebrows that just couldn’t be contained. I wore obscene amounts of bright blue eyeshadow and fought with my mom about anything and everything.

I also had a single arch enemy, whose name I will absolutely NOT name here! She had a habit of being my friend one day then lying to my friends behind my back and turning them all against me the next day. I’m sure this person is a lovely human being now, but isn’t it funny how quickly those middle school grudges can come flying back as soon as we summon them?

My 12th birthday was on January 1, 1999, right smack dab in the middle of the sixth grade school year. My parents threw me a birthday party like they did every year (something I am forever grateful for!), and it was at this particular birthday that Margaret Adams gave me my very first journal. The journal was large and yellow and shaped like a flower. I loved it.

I had been longing for a space where I could pour my heart out — a journal where I could truly be myself at a time when no one seemed to understand me.

In this journal, I could be angry. I could say whatever I wanted about said arch enemy and no one could stop me. I could be sappy and gush about the boys I loved. I could write poetry and draw pictures. I could create secret codes and invent one-player games that I would play by myself. And no. This was not lame. It was fun.

Inside of this journal, time and space were all mine, and I could exist within them, writing and being and dreaming.

This, my friends, is how I first started writing, and I haven’t stopped since. 

I’ve questioned my call as a writer again and again. I’ve wondered whether or not I could ever measure up to the other writers in my college writing program  (the answer is— yes, I could. We were all very different writers and that’s what made the program wonderful). I’ve quit writing for a day or two here and there only to pick it back up when life happened and I needed a way to process.

Writing is the thing I can’t not do. It returns to me, again and again, no matter how hard I try to stop it.  Writing keeps me here. It invites you in, and I hope you uncover something good every time you show up.

My hope, in writing, is that you the reader might feel a little less alone. That you would laugh and maybe cry. That you’d put your thinking cap on and consider something in a way that you hadn’t considered it before. That you’d be a learner who is okay with making the occasional mistakes, and that you’d ask good questions — about life, about God, about the things others experience, and the experiences of your own.

I actually have to confess — I am terrified every single time I sit down to write. I’m terrified of what you might think. I’m afraid of being wrong. I’m afraid of sounding stupid or offending someone or saying something that 10 years down the road I will wish I didn’t say.

But you know what — that’s part of being human. We make mistakes. We say the wrong things. And then we learn and we grow.

And so, with that in mind, I’ve decided to blog every single day for the month of November. It’s as an act of resilience, a choice to show up. It’s a way for me to embody what I already believe to be true — that if more of us felt comfortable showing up as our beautifully broken selves — the selves that care deeply for other people, yet still harbor resentment towards their 6th grade arch enemies — the world would be a better place.


We’d be less guarded and more empathetic. We’d ask better questions and not demand that we always be right. We’d embrace our flaws and celebrate our victories. We’d discover that the we, and the world we live in, are a lot more nuanced than we’d like to believe.

So, I hope you’ll join me. I hope you’ll show up and learn along with me. 

I’ll be writing about anything and everything: politics and the questions I’m asking, Jesus and the ways I’m experiencing him, life and how we’re somehow always in-between, and then the fun stuff — movies and books and beauty products —  because sometimes, we just need a break from the heavy and the hard. We need to laugh and remember that things are still funny and good.

If there’s something you’d like me to write about, just let me know in the comments section. I am open to any and all ideas and am excited to use this process to learn more about myself, about you, and about the world around me.

Happy reading, friends!  Thanks for sticking around.