All The Words 

Years ago, my ex-husband and I used to talk about how we were going to come through our divorce. We were going to write a book together about how to do it right. I was going to keep blogging on the topic. Maybe he would do a podcast episode with me about it. We could help people. We would be transparent and stay open in our relationship. We would always be friends. We would actively co-parent every step of the way. We aimed high, and I'm glad we did. Our separation agreement

Grief is a strange beast. It stops and blocks your path suddenly just when you've found a happy, heart-thumping pace, or t-bones you unceremoniously at light-speed, flattening you into a trauma pancake when you least expect it. I personally feel like Nostalgia and Grief hang out in the same circles. But while Nostalgia may make me more prone to watching 80's holiday specials with all the commercials on YouTube, occasionally misting over at my childhood and wondering at the pa

A few weeks ago I found a brand collab from years ago printed out in a stack of paper more than ready to shred. I remember I didn't book this one. It was a large brand looking for a 'disabled influencer/expert/advocate'. They had approached me directly, and we went a few rounds, but in the end it didn't pan out and I was glad for it. I thought a lot about these brand asks over the years. How I felt like I'd reached a milestone when I was first approached, and how I gradually

Recently I started re-reading my old Bump & Hustle blog plosts. I've been writing it since 2010 and the journey covers a lot of ground. It's tone and content has shifted so many times, with stories about being a new mother, smatterings of small business, sharing my fertility journey, my general health, my marriage evolution and memories of our homes... and always with '5 tips' here and there! Of course there are generous sprinkles of outdated brand collabs before 'collabs' as

I decided to try medication for my endometriosis. Provided it was endometriosis. The pain was at its worst a seasoned and chronic "8/10", snapping my eyes open at night, covering me in a blanket of sweat and twisting me into odd shapes as I clutched my side. At best it was a buzzing "4/10" that had me wearing my heating pad like a strangely crafted underwear at all times, while on every form of medication and leaning into every distraction and healing modality. I hadn't slept

I have endometriosis. I didn't always know. But I knew something was off. I always had painful periods. I have had horrible cramps, horrible draining cycles, and later, experienced multiple miscarriages. Before I solved the riddle of my reproductive body, I was told by my ObGyn that I 'might' have adenomysosis but that there was no way to confirm that without a hysterectomy and a biopsy afterwards. This was back in 2008. I was told I didn't have endometriosis after an explora

It's like I can't remember the last few years. When did I have my surgeries? When did my dad die? When did I travel? The timing seems like it doesn't add up somehow and every single time I look back I wonder, is this a strange side effect of grief? Or depression? Is this still a neurological side effect of hemiplegic attacks? A cognitive blur or maybe my ADHD? An issue with my memory that just needs me to focus more? All of the above? I am usually so good with timelines, but

It's not that I'm that different, but I am. It's that I used to instinctively, truly without thought, tell my story as a direct extension of what had just happened in my life. My brain effortless veered toward the words and the screen, and the ease of the spill-over was not something that I stopped to measure. When that changed, I became fixated on how to recapture that Me back. That brain back. One fluid motion - action, grab phone, tell story, post. Instagram was where I li

For years now - four years now - I have been wanting to jump back in to the joy of sharing my story. I miss it. I miss the rolling of the words through my brain, scrambling off my tongue and onto the page. I miss humbly searching for the right order of things and the satisfying breath as language falls into place. I haven't had that in a long long time. In 2021 I shifted directions for a lot of reasons. My health was not great, but at the same time, that was what I was writin