Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Yes, I know it’s already April and three months of 2019 have already passed but I feel like now is when my year will start. The first three months went by so quickly and they are a blur so I have chosen to say they don’t count. I didn’t do things I told myself I would start doing. My mind and body never got into anything completely. I can give you all the excuses I have as to why I didn’t do these things but the bottom line is, life happens, and things don’t go according to plan. So, it’s the beginning of April and I have chosen to start my new year now. And among working out and eating better, starting this blog was the thing to do.

You might be thinking ‘why now?’ and I have a few different reasons. The first happened a few months ago, back when I should have started this blog, but procrastination is my best friend, and that’s all I can say. But a few months ago I was watching the Golden Globes and Glenn Close won her award and her speech awoke something in me. She talked about her Mom who, at 80 years old, told Glenn she felt like she hadn’t accomplished anything, and that made me feel such sadness. Then Glenn said that as women ‘we have to find personal fulfillment, we have to follow our dreams’, and I thought to myself, Holy shit, Glenn Close is talking to me. Three months later her words still echo in my head, so I’m here now. I am a wife, I am a mother, but I need to be more. I need to be something for me.

I turned 43 in March and I realized that time isn’t stopping or slowing down and if I don’t do this now am I ever really going to do it? I have wasted so much time, seriously wasted it, and I can’t do it anymore. I’ve been ‘writing’ for many years and I put writing in quotes because the reality is that I’ve been procrastinating while writing on the side. I swear if there was a support group I would be the poster child. And I don’t know why I do it. The switch in my mind doesn’t go off so I decided to take a hammer to that switch and try to change what I’ve been doing all these years because it’s clearly not working. I can’t waste any more time because I could leave this world tomorrow and I’d have nothing to show for it, no footprint, no way to tell anyone that I was here, except for my daughter, who is my greatest accomplishment.

The final reason as to why now is my Grandmother. She passed away a few weeks ago and before she died she told my uncle all of the things she wanted him to say in her eulogy. All that she was proud of, and of course being a wife and mother were the two most important things to her. But then there was a list of things she had done, all that she accomplished. And those things weren’t wrapped up in anyone else, they were all about her. And I realized that I want to be able to have a list like that. I don’t want it to be said that I was a great wife and a loving mother and nothing else.

In writing, everyone always talks about your platform. What will you be known for, what’s your specialty? And I don’t really have one. This blog isn’t a mommy blog or a marriage blog, it’s a life blog. The truth is I have so many thoughts in my head I couldn’t pick just one to focus on. I want to write about it all. There are things that I need to say, to get off my chest, to get out of my head so I can stop obsessing over them. Will everyone like everything I say? Absolutely not. Do I care? Not really. And I don’t want to sound mean or cocky. The truth is, worrying about what others will think or say is the main reason I have held back with my writing. I can’t do that anymore. I have to do this for me. And I hope it will be therapeutic and it will heal some old scars. And maybe someone else will read it and it will help them too.

I titled my blog everycookiecrumbles based on a conversation I had with one of my aunts. I was upset about something and she said ‘you’re a tough cookie, but even tough cookies crumble sometimes’. And I think that sums me up perfectly. I put up my walls, I have a tough exterior, and that makes people think I am stronger than I really am. The truth is I crumble all the time. Just like everyone else. So, I’m going on this journey and maybe some of you will come along. You might like it, you might love it, you might hate everything that I write. And that is perfectly fine because even if you hate it, at the end of the day, at least I made you feel something.