Who are you? The 50 Word (and/or Phrase) Challenge – What Makes You, well You.

Sometimes we lose sight of who we are for no more reason other than life just gets too busy and taking a moment for ourselves seems like something we need to pencil into our own schedules.

But this can happen to the best of us whether you are married with children or just married to your job. And when it comes down to it how many of us can stop and really describe ourselves in no less than 50 words and/or phrases. For someone like me, I’m not always the best at finding the good in myself and finding what best describes who I truly am or what makes up me.

That’s the challenge I put before the people reading this blog post – woman or man. We can often lose sight of the things that are important to us only because life moves so fast and we forget to stop and just simply look at the world around us. Is it because we think we might miss something if we slow down? But it should be the fear of what we are missing if we don’t slow down.

Because when you stop to look around every now and then, sometimes it can be mind-blowing and even life altering. When I was pregnant with Sweet Pea, I was put on bedrest for six weeks. I thought I was going to lose my mind because I am one of those nonstop-go kinds of people who just never knew how to stop. But leave it to my child to figure out how to slow me down before he was even born. As my belly got bigger, I had never stopped to really take into account how amazing this whole miracle was until I was lying bored on my bed, watching television for the umpteenth hour and I playfully laid a Beanie baby on my bare belly. And to my surprise, this stuff animal started jumping all over my belly from the kicks of the baby inside of me. I watched in amazement as this stuffed animal came to life. My unborn baby moving furiously in my belly, kicking with all his might to get whatever I had on my skin off.  I call that my ‘stop to smell the roses’ moment when I was pregnant. We learned in the worst way possible that life is far too precious to be taken for granted less than three months after I was put on bedrest when we lost Timothy. This notion is something I am constantly aware of now throughout my life. But I don’t always follow my own advice because I am a wife, a mother and a full-time career woman, so life gets hectic ALL THE TIME. Needless to say, it’s usually my kids that bring me back to ground level where we should all hang out every now and then to smell the flowers and watch the imaginary monkeys swinging in the trees.

Now for the arduous task of taking my own challenge and listing 50 words and/or phrases that best describe me:

1. Woman
2. Wife
3. Lover
4. Mother
5. Stepmother
6. Grandmother
7. Daughter
8. Daughter-in-law
9. Sister
10. Aunt
11. Writer
12. Friend
13. Family Photographer
14. Family Event Planner
15. Hawaiian
16. Marketing Coordinator
17. Former Journalist
18. Mediator/Referee
19. Swimmer (More endurance than speed)
20. What I love the most:

• My kids/My husband/My family/My friends
• Books
• Movies (Mainly Chick Flicks and Superheroes)
• Musical Theater/Broadway Musicals
• Sunsets on the Beach
• Relaxing afternoons spent on a boat dock at the lake
• Boating with Mark & Di
• An ice cold beer on a hot summer day
• Feel of sand between my toes
• Summertime
• Bubble Baths
• Funko Pop Figurines (I’m a dork)
• Disney Cartoons, especially Lilo & Stitch
• Anything with a Hawaiian flower on it
• My kids’ artwork
• Flamingos (Thanks, Pop)
• Penguins (Thanks, Timothy)
• St. Louis Cardinals game with my mom
• Trips to the St. Louis Zoo with Tim and the boys
• Favorite Foods: Mouthwatering Fried Chicken, Talayna’s Pizza, Mississippi Mud Root Beer Float from Fitz’s, campfire S’mores and any Ice Cream with Chocolate
• Favorite Smells: Recently Bathed Babies, Clean Laundry, Freshly Cut Grass, Roses, Men’s Cologne and the aroma of a Good Home-cooked Meal
• Favorite Sounds: My children’s uncontrollable laughter and hearing my kids and my husband say “I love you”

Ten More Tidbits that make up who I am:

41. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my father and my stepson.
42. The abusive relationship I was in my freshmen year in college taught me valuable yet painful lessons I carry with me everyday.
43. The best memories of my childhood involve my family – pop, mom, Chris & me – altogether laughing whether it was on vacation, at a restaurant or just in our house. Those were the best.
44. No matter where I go, home to me is wherever my family is.
45. Ironically, Hawaii and Bull Shoals Lake are my two favorite places. So different, yet so relaxing.
46. In high school, I first planned to go to college to be a physical therapist because of my two knee surgeries. But after two women on separate occasions came to talk to our classes about being sexually assaulted and I wrote the article for our school newspaper, my mind changed instantly about my career path.
47. My heart skips a beat every time we pass the cemeteries where my dad and Timothy are buried and every one of us blows kisses to say, “We miss you!”
48. One day, I hope to write every one of the stories swimming in my head. And I hope maybe someone else will want to read them as much as I want to write them.
49. I fall in love with my husband over and over again every time I watch him with his kids and now with his granddaughter.
50. What I fear most is losing the people I love in my life and having absolutely no control over it.

And one extra fact about me is that I hope to one day start a website, an organization or just some kind of support group to honor my stepson and help other families who have endured the same kind of pain that we have. Maybe together, our shared pain can help move others forward when their lives feel immovable.

Given the fact that I write this blog and have never shied away from divulging details about my life, I guess this should be no different. This list took me a little time because I’ve become somewhat hardwired to think about my family first and what makes them happy.

But the challenge lies with each of you who takes the time to read this blog post. Your 50 things could, of course, just be words, but they can obviously be sentences like my last ten (or 11) tidbits that describe who I am.

I guess this is all about taking a moment to ‘stop and smell the roses’ and figure out what makes you, well you. And not the professional-ese we use on our resumes and LinkedIn to describe us best as career men and women. But the things that make us want to get out of bed in the morning, brings smiles to our faces and find a little bit of hope in the world to be able to look toward a promising future.

For anyone who would like to participate in my challenge, I have added the comment box. While it says your name is required, your first name is sufficient. And of course, your list does not need to be in a pretty list. There are no specifics to my challenge.