Hello hello! I am glad you’ve landed here. It’s a little challenging to introduce myself in the void of the internet, but here’s what I would probably tell you in person. I am:
- a mom of six delightful humans
- married to my best bud (I know, I know, influencers always say that. I’m still overthinking it, but it’s true)
- A lifelong Christian (regular style, but with kind of a quirky history)
- an analytical, curious type. I secretly want to be a detective
- a Pacific Northwest girl at heart (weather and coffee and the beach, baby)
- an extremely non-competitive runner
- an advocate for abuse survivors
- still figuring out what I want to do with my life
As far as the advocacy piece goes, it’s like this. I am first and foremost a wife and mom. God and I have talked a lot about this, because He has thrown me willy-nilly into a space I really never planned on occupying. I am happy to be here, but I will always prioritize my family. My advocacy work may take a back seat, but it has become an important piece of my life and history. You can read more about that story here. While I’m on the topic, let me add that advocacy is a newly emerging as a bright new, glitzy new, important new world…that has not sorted its own principles out yet. It’s going to get pretty important for us who are serious about doing this well to figure ourselves out in the next few years. I do have some thoughts on that.
Speaking of thoughts, this online space is where I intend to gather mine. You’ll find a mix of things, but it’s going to include some things on advocacy principles, some old stories I wrote about my kids, and maybe some pieces about the travel we do as a family. Most of my advocacy work the past few years has been over on Facebook, where I make it my mission to share accessible, shareable, easily absorbed excerpts from the books I read about abuse. You can click through to that page, here.
I’ve also participated with my husband, Peter, and a good friend of ours in starting a non-profit called Awaken, dedicated to raising awareness about abuse in churches. Awaken is back-burnered for us right now, but we have quite a bit of material online. You can find that here.
The last five years of education in advocacy has given my husband and me some surprising and important insights into the rest of life, like about church and parenting and relationships. Our parenting style has, in fact, changed significantly in the last few years, but I attribute the flourishing, trustful relationships we have with our kids to some of the changes we’ve made. Our early years as parents weren’t terrible. We got a lot of helpful education and habits from our church at the time, along with a lot of authoritarian junk we’re still shedding. For entertainment purposes, you can read about the years in the trenches over here. I had very little time on my hands back in those days, but when I did, I wrote down the hilarious things our kids did. Please don’t hold me too responsible for all the mentions of swats and discipline — we wouldn’t do it the same way again.
With that, let me say again, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.