Hello, and thank you for stopping by Where Good Things Grow—a new journey where I hope to grow personally, and a space that I hope will develop into a community of like-minded individuals looking to increase the joy in their life. I wanted to take a moment, or several, to a) introduce myself, b) tell you what you can expect from me, and c) why you should care. Giving you some warning this one is long, and will be the longest post I make, but it needs to be, and hopefully you will see why.

Let’s start from the beginning, I was born and raised in the great beautiful country of Canada, and although I have not lived there for many years, I still call it “home.” I came to the states (what non-Americans call the U.S.) to play college softball, and this is where I met my current husband, Jon, also a college athlete. It was really love at first sight—as soon as I saw him play basketball, I was hooked. He is shy, easy going, and funny, everything that I am not. Anyway, we started dating when we were 18, and to my parents’ worst fear, I decided to stay in the states after graduation. I went to law school, and Jon, not only followed me, but supported me mentally and financially throughout those three years. I graduated during one of the worst economic crises of our time. While I was unable to find a “traditional” lawyer job, I received a job offer a day before I found out I passed the bar, and I have been happily employed with the company ever since.

In 2012, I became a mom, something I always said I was born to be. My sweet little bald 6lbs. 13 oz. baby boy, Brody, was born. My whole world, my true best friend. Then in 2016, my other sweet little baby, Bennett, was born at 9lbs 2 oz. Benny, as we call him, has the prettiest blue eyes (like his daddy), and the deepest little voice. He truly has made our family complete. This part of my introduction is short, and not because my boys aren’t important—a lot of what I will share or post will likely relate to family, being a parent, and all of the trials and tribulations that come along with it.

But who am I really? I am honestly hoping that throughout this new journey, I might figure that out. I can tell you that I consider myself a kind person (sometimes in need of checking myself), stubborn as hell, competitive, determined, sensitive, and a raging perfectionist. I love working out, sports, people, hosting and planning parties, and traveling (except I absolutely hate flying). Like many things, almost all of these have been disrupted in some way in 2020.

Now, I said that I was going to be honest, so here goes the vulnerable part of this adventure. With all these things, I am also impatient and hot-headed. I usually have FOMO. I hate change, and am the furthest thing from a risk-taker in my personal life, but don’t have a problem putting myself out there professionally. I will almost always take things personally. I love with all my being, sometimes to the point where it consumes me and makes my soul ache, and has frankly led to the end of relationships when I felt people didn’t love me back in the same way. I have anxiety and panic attacks. I suffer(ed) from depression, including post-partum. I am an extreme hypochondriac (often leading to the panic attacks). I was suicidal as a teenager, and to this day believe softball saved my life (one day I will share this story). I have struggled with my weight my entire life, which eventually led to bulimia during law school (I think before now, there may only be two people in the world who I have shared this with). Phew, this paragraph was tough to write, and then re-read. I don’t share all this for sympathy. I told you that I want this to be a community, and for that to happen, you need to know who you are dealing with, the real me, and like I said at the beginning of this post, this is a journey for me too.

Another confession…part of the reason why I wanted to start a blog was because I was following all of these beautiful women on Instagram, who not only share fashion, but their lives, and I can say, several of them have truly influenced me (including my bank account). While I think that a lot of them are genuine, I found myself unable to relate to most of them. A lot of what seems so different is their size—they look perfect in everything. I would buy what they shared, and look like the Michelin man, with rolls showing where I didn’t even know they could.

I definitely know that there are many size inclusive influencers out there, but I thought well, I could give this a try—I love clothes and beauty products, so I can share the things I love and give people a different perspective. So, yes, this journey started off as a fashion and beauty blog. One big problem though, for these types of blogs, you need to take pictures of yourself, in the clothes you want to share. Well that doesn’t bode well for someone with a negative self-image of themselves. I have had my husband take pictures of me in outfits the past few weekends, and have hated them all, no amount of editing is going to change my mind. I hate them so much to the point where I was doubting this whole thing—what am I going to post about if I don’t do fashion and beauty? That was going to be my niche—everything online says you need a niche to be successful, and the Internet does not lie. Well, I am going to tell you two more things about me.

In Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead, she challenges you to write two of your values. She devotes a whole page of values to choose from, but you can only pick two. This is a lot more difficult than it seems. So after pondering this for a while, and going back and forth, I settled on “perseverance” and “connections.” I have worked my ass off to get to where I am—nothing has ever came easy for me, from school, to sports to my career. I don’t give up, and while right now this journey might not be looking like what it started out to be, I am determined to keep going and make it into something special, which brings me to my second value, connections. Working from home for the past nine months has made me realize that I get energy from interacting with people. I love talking to people, learning from them, listening to them, sharing with them, and helping them if I can. So that is my goal with Where Good Things Grow, I want to connect with people, and if that means just me sharing my thoughts, experiences, and things I love then that’s fine, but I am hoping that it will become more than that, I hope that you too can share the things you love and some things from your own personal journey of growth.

So now you are like, why should I follow you? Well my hope is that you will follow me because you can find something here that you connect with, or that you feel I can provide you with some new ideas, or maybe because you are looking for something/someone that looks a little different—no niche, no perfection, just some from the heart experiences, products, and ideas. I will gauge the success of this blog not only by my own personal growth, but also if I can inspire even one person.

Okay, one last thing, I promise (I should probably buy you a drink or coffee for getting to the end of this). While writing this, I was listening to one of my favorite Spotify playlists, Chill Hits, when the song Finally Feel Good came on. I love the beat of it, so I put it on repeat, and then I started to listen to the lyrics and was curious about what they meant. The song is by James Arthur, and he said it’s about “learning to love yourself and feeling comfortable in your own skin.” Now, if that isn’t a sign to keep going, I don’t know what is.

Alana xo