• Because life is finite and certainly not guaranteed.
• Because I want to find a way to use my talents and create something beautiful and bold that I can contribute with pride.
• Because I have great anxieties and it helps when I ask to be granted – 

The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

The courage to change the things I can, and 

The wisdom to know the difference. 

• Because it makes me think of my mom and offer her so much grace, especially in her absence.
  
• Because that in turn makes me think of my dad, and how desperately I wish I could ask him a thousand questions about his life and ours as a family that now go untold, especially in his absence.
  
• Because my grief has manifested in this uncanny concern about my demise and not leaving enough of myself behind for my girls.
  
• Because capturing and collating my deepest and most benign parts, would be something especially profound, which could continue my tidbits and tales, especially in my absence.
  
• Because that is the only part of this life equation that is within my control, so I now all I need is wisdom and courage to reach that elusive serenity for which I am aiming.
  
• Because when I stop and take 15 minutes to just write or breathe or go outside and look at the sky or I just sit on the ground to stretch or read a book or connect with my girls, I feel better.
  
• Because when I take the time to jot down little stories about myself and memories and life lessons and hopes and regrets and pieces of me, I feel better.
• Because when I use talents fashions and parts of myself that have been hidden away, I feel better.
• Because when I consider and challenge, create and celebrate, I feel better.
• Because it feels nice to believe in myself again.
• Because it feels nice to be remembered and seen and valued. And it feels good to go back and remember sometimes.
• Because it feels good to go through life looking for grace and gratitude, beauty and humor, meaning and mundane.
• Because in spite of the very heavy and mundane parts of my modern, midlife, mama life, there is still plenty of extraordinary within the ordinary.
• Because I want desperately to be able to remember those little moments I’m so many others throughout my life and into the future but I just can’t seem to make it happen.
• Because I want to make it happen and if I do there’s probably some other folks out there who do too perhaps we could try it together.
• Because, who knows, it could be fun.
  

Start here if you are looking to consider some why within yourself.

Why
2/7/21

• Because, why not.
• Because I’m terrified, and also because it’s all I’ve thought about for some time now.
• Because I want my story to be captured and left behind in case I’m not able to share it myself.
• Because in the thick of this covid chaos, I’ve found it hard to find joy and meaning in the endless chores and isolation, the constant togetherness with those I hold tightest, and the boredom and loneliness of it all.
• Because I’m an over-educated domestic engineer, who is without gainful employment for the first time since I was 13, and I am finding that I enjoy it and feel all kinds of conflict with it.
• Because I’m an enthusiastic public school PTA mom, who is unexpectedly homeschooling a 3rd and 1st grader, and now wonder what we can do better to engage and educate and build equity for all. Because education is the great equalizer, especially in the midst of such upheaval.
• Because I’m a woman and a wife who wants some sliver of that fervor and fascination that was felt so early on, when life felt complicated but was so much simpler.
• Because I am a white woman, and while I’ve taken some ugly hits throughout life, I experience privilege, simply because of my outsides, and I am grappling with that.
• Because I get lost in ideas of grief and loss, hope and transformation, and I get inspired by others who have hurt and healed. I want to ponder with others who’ve been rocked in these ways.
• Because I read and listen and wonder and imagine what could be, and I want to learn from others who have their own wanders through life’s biggest questions.
• Because I’m halfway through life, and I know that it will go really fast, so I want to think about how to make what’s left simple and rich and as peaceful as I am able.
• Because I’m a group fitness instructor, of too long to admit, and I miss the connection of shouting at a group of dear ones, over music that makes you feel and focus and find space.
• Because I’ve never found a profession that fits, but I’ve tried and done ok at a hundred of them, so now I want to see how all the dabbling brings together my pieces and parts.
• Because I want to feel inspiration and passion, and creativity is an outlet to explore such needs.
• Because I want to write and try something that could possibly fail epically.
• Because life is frail and finite, so I’m willing to try exploring my why, in a way that might inspire another to try too. Maybe together this boldness will make even the most mundane part’s of life more meaningful – one choice at a time.