THE JOURNAL
A safe and brave space for intersectional conversations around sex, love, relationships, parenting, and life.
The Art of Blending: Thriving as a Resilient and Loving Blended Family
Families are incredibly intricate tapestries of life. They are complex, sometimes complicated, and things don't always turn out how you may have intended. Whether it's navigating through tough times, dealing with a relationship's ebb, or the dissolution of a marriage, people find themselves sculpting these remarkable blended families. It's like taking the unexpected and, through resilience and love, turning it into a masterpiece of togetherness.
Blended families have the ability to bring people together from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. They create a space where differences can be celebrated and where love knows no boundaries. It may not always be smooth sailing, but blended families have a resilience that cannot be easily broken.
3 reasons why we don’t let ourselves be happy
Have you ever felt so incredibly happy with your life and wondered to yourself "When will the shoe drop? Will this happiness last? Do I need to brace myself for something bad waiting to happen?"
If you have, you're not alone. I've been there and for years I used to live preparing myself for the next bad thing whether it was health-related, work, my relationships, something in parenting, my love life, the list goes on. The story or mindset of having to be prepared for loss is the part of ourselves that's trying to protect us from the feeling of pain or loss. When it comes to our own happiness, many of us are familiar with the pattern of taking two steps forward, one step back.
I self-sabotaged my own happiness by allowing these thoughts to keep me from pursuing my own joy.
Mom shaming, something that affects us all.
The pressure women carry for having to keep up with society standards around beauty, fitness, and careers. Throw motherhood into that mix and you can only imagine the anxiety that can manifest by the innocent act of simply "trying to do you boo." I became a mother at 21, just when I was starting my very first career as a hairstylist. I wasn't married at the time and both my husband and I were barely adults trying to figure out this thing called "adulting." We both didn't come from families with money so a household with two working parents was our only option. Thankfully our parents were close enough to watch Airis at the time, which saved us on childcare expenses, but it was HARD AF! Not only did I have the pressure of building a clientele, learning how to become better at my craft, and being a decent adult, but now I had the pressure of raising another human life.