Hey there, you matter. Yes, you. You are wonderful, brilliant, beautiful and enough. It’s crazy how enough you are and I want you to share your story… are you with me? I always love sticking my nose into a good book. Reading seldom never happens during wedding season. Partially because I am tied to my computer and partially because I feel like my brain might explode if I open one more “tab” of ideas to process. I’ve always loved reading, from Nicholas Sparks novels to Mary Higgins Clark mysteries. My mom used to sit at the table and read Nancy Drew books to us while we cleaned the kitchen after dinner. (Now I realize how brilliant this was because we always wanted her to read more. More reading = more cleaning, go mom!) I was so excited to wrap up my wedding season and get back into the book scene. I hopped on my Kindle and downloaded a few of the books that I had been dying to read, of the list, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl. It’s her life stories, both hilarious but real, with so many sentences piled together that make me laugh as I silently feel more normal. I’m only halfway through this one but I wanted to share a quote that stuck out to me, something that made me think I needed to share her words.
“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up.” – Lena Dunham – Not That Kind of Girl
I am in this industry to tell stories, to tell love stories complete with happiness, sadness, excitement, pain, new beginnings, change and everything in between. Whilst telling others stories, I am also writing my own – on the posts on this blog, on the paintings I make, in the images I take, in the words I share. I think every story deserves to be told, to be preserved, to be remembered. I think the first step in telling more stories, is accepting that your story is different, it isn’t written the same as everyone else. There are bends in your road that others won’t have, there will be mountain peaks that you enjoy (sometimes alone, sometimes with someone) and valleys where you feel truly and utterly alone – it’s all a part of your story that is still being written as we speak. Every chapter doesn’t need to be beautiful or perfect to be worthy, perfection is boring, people understand the mess and yet so often we excuse it and try to erase and remove it from our lives. Going into the new year, my prayer is that we all start to feel our stories are worthy. Whether we choose to share them with the world or keep them personal, each line of the story is an extension of the life we are living out. I want this next chapter to be filled with dream chasing, with rising in the midst of failure, I want to fill it with adventures and see where saying “yes” will take me, I want to rise while lifting others, and take long naps. I want to put the pieces together and tell a novel that inspires, encourages, and let’s you know that we aren’t really all that different at the end of the day. Hey, you matter. Your story matters, I want to tell it. Now get back to being awesome and make this chapter the best one yet. What do you think?
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** Special thanks to everyone who shopped The Print Shop this past holiday weekend! We are almost to 1,000 orders since launching in April and that is entirely crazy and exciting and surreal! Keep checking back as I update it weekly and when picking out presents for your loved ones, remember that watercolor mugs, prints, pillows, and phone cases make AWESOME presents! Thanks, I knew you were the best ever. To visit the shop: CLICK HERE.
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