Schmutzie shares an interesting story on The Power of Your Voice vs. Ad Based Movements in Social Media

Melissa from Tales of the Anti-Preemie tells about sleepwalking through the last several years in her post Waking from a Long Slumber

Amy from Trembling Ovaries returns from a year-long hiatus with a wonderful post: Head in the Clouds

Our former contributor, Cristie Ritz-King, just launched an amazing new blog. Check out Reinvention Girl

These are twenty-five tips we’ve probably all heard before, but they are certainly worth repeating!

Brook shares an excellent and spot-on defense of the selfie. So continue snapping away!

We’ve got some great links for you this week!

Liz from but then I had kids… shares a funny post on Open House.

Check out these amazing photographs by Dinah Fried. She uses her talents to take pictures of “literature’s most memorable meals.”

Audrey answers some interesting questions in her post 10 Reasons to Start a Blog.

Essential oils are all the rage these days. The Prairie Homestead put together a beautiful post on starting your journey into natural living with oils.

Kathleen from The Lavender Bouquet has an eye for beauty and sharing the beauty of memories. Check out this post where she shares a recipe and the memory surrounding it: Good Morning Monday – Dunk in Coffee or Red Wine.

Cynthia from Flotsam of the Mind brings up a great discussion about the Facebook “Like”.

Lara from Joy, Lovely Joy talks about darkness, about struggling with faith, and about writing in this deeply personal, but universal piece.

Kristy from Breath of Sunshine confronts two images of herself in this vulnerable and beautiful poem.

What have you found this week that inspired you? What have you written that you would love to share?  Post links in the comments! Read more about Friday Favorites if you have questions.

Today we are incredibly fortunate to have Lindsey Mead join us. Lindsey is a wife, mother, writer, and MBA who has been blogging since 2006 at A Design So Vast. If you haven’t found her there yet, please do; you’ll always be inspired.

A little about her writing from her blog:

“A Design So Vast was started in part to record some of both that struggle and the moments of incandescent joy or laughter that I don’t want to forget. I write mostly about the challenge of truly inhabiting the moments of my life, the joys and difficulties of trying to be a mindful parent. I talk about my effort to find something to believe in and about my groping around the edges of my faith. I write about books I love, and the ways that stories and voices touch me.”

PU: I know many bloggers have been having a blogging identity crisis of sorts lately. How did you narrow your focus for your blog?

LM: You know, one of my persistent concerns is that my blog isn’t focused enough.  Honestly, I just write what’s on my mind, and that seems to coalesce around a few themes, but the connection is loose.  I don’t really identify as a mommy blogger, nor as a book blogger, nor as a spirituality blogger, but each of those strands is part of what I write about.

PU: How do you generate consistent content?

LM: Again, this is something I worry that I don’t do, in fact!  I write from the heart, so the only thing that’s consistent is the authenticity of what I share.  I guess after 7 1/2 years of blogging (OMG!) I have concluded that that’s consistent enough.

PU: How do you stay authentic in the midst of the big bloggers?

LM: I have never been a big blogger and I accepted long ago that I wasn’t going to be.  I went to BlogHer once, in 2010, and it was a frankly unpleasant experience for a lot of reasons but I definitely learned that I didn’t aspire to be a Big Blogger.  A lot of what was discussed was really foreign to me and helped me understand that growing into those aspects of blogging – monetizing, growing readership, etc – wasn’t my primary focus.  I don’t mean to judge those who aspire to that, at all – I admire it.  It’s just not my thing.  I’m too shy for that!

PU: What keeps you going when you hit those low blogging/low creativity moments?

LM: At this point it is such a practice, writing, blogging, that I can’t imaging stopping.  I did make a big change last year by shifting from 5 days/week (though one had been a picture, and one a quote, for a while) to 3 days/week (one remaining a quote).  I’m so aware of all the ways that the regular writing and interacting with readers has changed my life – that’s truly not an overstatement – that I don’t want to stop, ever.

PU: Have you always been a writer or did that come through blogging?

LM: Good question.  I was an English major in college and even before that I always wrote: stories, poems, and essays.  I went into business (consulting) coming out of college and then got an MBA and spent many years very far away from my historical involvement in and deep commitment to writing.  Starting my blog reminded me of how vitally important writing is to me, and so in some ways it did come through blogging, but it was maybe more a return to something that had always been there that I had lost touch with.

PU: What has been the most fulfilling part of blogging for you?

LM: Two things come to mind.  The first is meeting people, readers and other writers, some of whom have become incredibly important and dear friends.  I had no idea what a rich and supportive community existed in the blogosphere and I’ve been hugely privileged to meet some truly wonderful people.  Secondly, blogging has genuinely changed the way I exist in the world.  As I started writing regularly, I started paying more attention to my own life.  The early themes that emerged – presence,  attention, the heartbreak of time’s passage – helped me get really clear, really fast, on what mattered to me.  I am far more engaged in and aware of my ordinary days, and I can see in them now so much gorgeousness even in the midst of the most mundane realities.  I never imagined that blogging would have such a profound impact on me.

PU: How did you go about creating a community? What social media outlets have you found to be the most effective? The least effective?

LM: Twitter is my favorite.  I love it.  I can’t say exactly why, but it has something to do with the shortness of tweets and also about the community of people who are on there.  I also love Instagram.  If I created a community it was in spite of myself; I’ve never had clearly-stated goals about that, and probably ought to have.  I have made a great deal of one-on-one connections that matter a lot to me, and I guess in aggregate those are a community.

PU: How do you keep the connection with readers strong when your content changes? And, how do you keep your own connection to the blog authentic when what you are writing about changes or shifts?

LM: This is very much on my mind right now, as my children get older.  I’ve written a lot about them and have always made an effort to focus my stories on my own feelings and emotions about parenting them, but there’s no question they’re characters in my blog.  In fact, they’ve each been recognized before from the blog – huge thrills for them, vague fears from me!  But as they get older I find myself more and more wary about sharing their stories.  There have always been things I won’t talk about – I rarely write about my husband or my marriage, for example – but the circle of what feels off-limits and private is widening. This came to a real head recently when I thought long and hard about writing a book about Grace’s adolescence, and about mothering a tween.  I got quite far down the road of doing that and in so doing realized a fundamental degree of discomfort with the whole idea.  She thinks it’s a great idea, but I don’t know how long that will be true, and there is just too much risk for me in writing that.  So I’m not going to.

PU: Any other thoughts you would love to share?

LM: When it comes to finding readers, my growth has certainly been organic and slow.  I do mean SLOW.  Remember, I’ve been blogging regularly since September 2006!  But one thing I’ll say for sure is you have to read if you expect to be read.  At least that’s my view.  So reading other blogs, and commenting on them, is really vital to having people read your stuff.  It doesn’t feel like tit-for-a-tat to me, though it sort of sounds that way when I write it.  It is more about mutual support, and I think others recognize a genuine person who is a thoughtful reader as well as an honest writer.

PU: We are very thankful to have Lindsey join us with her honest and heartfelt thoughts today. Readers, what else would you love to know? Leave any questions/responses in the comments!

Today I had every intention of writing today about the wrinkles and the lagging metabolism and the body’s assholian tendency to hold on to weight. And my tendency to make up new words, particularly ones that integrate a curse. But I won’t, because none of it matters.

I will give you, instead, some of the knowledge — Fulghum style — I have accumulated over my years as I approach crone-dom. I know, dramatic. Suck it.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned at Dana Farber
As it turns out, I was looking in the wrong places for meaning in my life. In the end, meaning was not found at the end of the working-mom rat race or even during Power Vinyasa yoga class or inside a book, but right there in my car as I drove my friend to Boston with her 6 year old in the backseat.

Here is what I know.

Everywhere you go, bring jokes and food. Be ready and willing to laugh, and cry, at all times. Buying someone a coffee is the universal language of empathy with foreign strangers across the hospital waiting room.

Be there, but don’t intrude. Hold hands when crossing the hallway.

Drive safely, even when someone is puking in the backseat. Have some humanity. And don’t run people over on crosswalks or anywhere, for that matter. Never text while driving.

The job you think is so important is just a job. True purpose comes in the dark hours of friendship when just being there to catch someone before they fall is worth your entire annual salary.

You will never, as long as you live, have the right words when it comes to a kid with cancer. It’s better to say the wrong ones than to say nothing at all.

Reach out. Ask for help. Take it as it comes.

Leave a gift at a friend’s doorstep. Make a meal. Do your part. It matters.

Take your kids on dates, one on one. Drink them in while they still want to date you. Say thank you, on the inside, every time they share something of themselves. Stand in absolute gratitude whenever humanly possible.

Forgive yourself for your judgments; know that they bring you nowhere worth being.

And always, when driving away, say I Love You. You only get one go-around on this crazy roller coaster ride so make it count.

If you have healthy children and a loving partner to come home to, you win the goddamn game and don’t forget that not even for one minute.
Because then you lose.

Smile, laugh, cry, weep.
Feel.

Spontaneous. Even typing the word is hard for me. Yes, going with the flow makes me itchy. Not because I’m an organized person, no. Definitely not that. But because I’m a control freak. When I consider doing something bordering on spontaneous, the what ifs tend to set in, and they start eating away at my confidence. Just like that, my head quickly fills with no’s.

But the other night as I was going to sleep, I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that spontaneity was exactly what my kids and I needed. The kids had a day off school the next day, and we hadn’t made plans. The idea of organizing Legos came to mind. That sounded about as thrilling to me as going to the dentist. We could do the usual sports marathon on the front lawn or trip to a park or something equally uninspired. Or I could go big — and shake us all out of our everyday ho hums. Yes, that’s what I would do.

At that point, I did what every good mother does and I turned to Facebook for ideas. Destination: San Francisco. What non-museum, touristy fun could we have in our own city? The ideas started flying in and I started to feel my confidence getting stronger than the no’s. I figured if others had accomplished these feats with their own children, I could too. (That is after I crossed off half of the ideas because, let’s be real, I know my limits and the idea of having two highly sensitive kids tucked into the middle of a cable car while the fearless one runs out to hang off the side was just headline news waiting to happen.)

It turns out, ideas weren’t really what I needed. What I needed was the vote of confidence. The push to be spontaneous. I fell asleep anticipating adventure, laughter, and fun.

I woke up to a monkey (in the form of a boy who looked a lot like Little) running around the house, a 13-year-old girl trapped in Pink’s 2-year old’s body, and a 7-year-old boy who was smarter than me. This. This is what we needed to escape. But how on earth could I manage them on the streets of San Francisco when I couldn’t wrangle them in our little house?

Tears (theirs and mine), threats (mostly mine), and a packed cooler later, we were on the road.

First stop? The Golden Gate Bridge. I mean, we’d driven over it before, but we’d never stopped at the view point to take in the story and the magic behind the wonder. The kids loved it. Big ate up the exhibits that explained the engineering behind the design. Little yelled out every time he spotted a “shark” in the water (no wonder they put Alcatraz out there!). And Pink danced with a glorious backdrop. I breathed in the fresh air, enjoyed the kids’ laughter, and tried my best not to look at the clock since it was getting dangerously late for lunch. But hey, if we were there, we had to do the drive over and back, too, right? Yep, lunch could be eaten in the car.

Next up? The playground in Golden Gate Park I’d been meaning to visit for years. And, as luck would have it, a spontaneous playdate with some of our best friends who had recently moved a couple hours away. Yes, my much more lively and confident friend had also decided to spend the day in the city and just happened to be wrapping up at a museum down the street when we arrived. It was truly meant to be.

We were having so much fun with our friends that I decided to skip our last stop — Ghirardelli Square for sundaes. After all, Big had to get home for basketball practice. He didn’t have the right shoes. I didn’t know how long it would take me to trek across the city in the afternoon. You got it, the no’s started taking over.

But when the kids, who knew about my brilliant plan, heard that I was having doubts, they were so disappointed. I started in with all the reasons they should be grateful. Then I realized I was a bit disappointed too. After all, we needed the cherry on top of our adventure.

I quickly adjusted the navigation system, and before we knew it, we were inhaling the glorious chocolatey air. Who knew Little could devour a ginormous 2-scoop waffle cone? Or that Big would ask to borrow my phone to take pictures of the super cool boat in front of Alcatraz we spied from the street? Watching the kids come to life? This was what we all desperately needed.

Sure, I may have come alarmingly close to having a panic attack as the wait for ice creamy goodness crept closer and closer to rush hour. Heck, I may have even unnecessarily snapped at the kids as much as I would have at home. But we did it. And the only thing that was more clear than the California skies that day, was the fact that we need to do it again. And again. And again. And again.