In the fall of 2015, my husband? Adam, developed some unusual problems. He began having flu-like symptoms that developed into intense muscle pain, weakness, fatigue and general discomfort. He was cleared by physicians all over our area including a neuromuscular specialist at Baylor Medical Center in Houston, TX.

Everyone, including us, decided it was stress and eventually moved on. His symptoms are much better now, but he’s never regained muscle stamina and often isn’t able to participate in strenuous activities. To this day, it’s unclear if a negative reaction to medication caused it, or if it was, in fact, stress-induced.

Although it was a very difficult time in both of our lives, one of the many blessings that came from that experience was the relationship we developed with our chiropractor and like-minded friends. It’s amazing what there is to learn about holistic healing when you continuously hit walls within mainstream allopathic and diagnostic medicine.

In the midst of disappointment, we found ourselves making life changes regarding our diet, as well as what household products we allowed in our home. We learned that being exposed to certain foods and toxins (processed foods, sugar, corn syrup, vegetable oils, heavy metals, dyes, etc.) stressed Adam’s system and needed to be avoided as much as possible. The more we learned, the more we realized there are so many reasons our bodies shouldn’t be working well, and there was so much we could do to help them be at their best moving forward.

After a year of tests and life changes, we decided to do a serious diet detox, both of us. During the spring of 2017 Adam and I ate an extreme elimination diet for 28 days in an effort to rid our bodies of any and all stressors. We learned what it felt like to fuel our bodies well. We both felt absolutely amazing. Energy, sleep, stress, all areas!

After the 28 days we began to add in a few other foods, but remained committed to eating primarily whole foods, and eating other indulgent foods very sparingly. It was the best I’ve ever felt and I was looking forward to living healthy and strong through my thirties.

That was in May of 2017, by June we had found recipes we loved, were enjoying trying new foods and creating snacks and loving our new healthy lifestyle.

So you’re probably thinking, this sounds great, what could’ve possible made you go back to your old habits… well, here’s when things changed. In mid-July of that same year, I found out I was pregnant. In fact, I told Adam the news while we were out to dinner on July 26th, our 9th wedding anniversary. It was magical. I remember thinking it would be such an easy pregnancy because I was going into it so healthy and feeling so strong.

I was wrong, I miscarried by the weekend and it was over faster than it began. It was painful and sad and everything you can imagine. After that, there was a drastic change in my attitude and behavior regarding my health. I was disgusted and disappointed in my “healthy” body.

Suddenly I wasn’t interested in eating well, taking the supplements my body needed, exercising regularly, resting, none of it. My body had failed. When it was supposedly at its healthiest, it failed. Why did it Whole Foods matter? Supplements? Rest? Was my health really worth it? I had two previous pregnancies that went great, why now? None of it made sense and I was struggling to understand.

Three months later I got pregnant with our Daisy and everything went beautifully, but I had left everything I learned behind and moved on, back to my “normal”, patterns. I didn’t want to spend my time or energy on healthy choices if it didn’t matter. I put it all out of my mind and made choices based on how I felt, or at best, in the name of “losing the baby weight”.

At the beginning of this year 2021, I committed to working on myself… physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally. I knew I would have to face this and I am. I’m revisiting the idea of fueling my body well and choosing not to believe the lie of failure. I’ve healed from the trauma that a miscarriage causes, and am facing my lifestyle head on, ready and committed to living my healthiest life.

Living a life centered around wellness doesn’t mean you eat only salad everyday and do yoga constantly. It looks different for all of us, but it’s a commitment to listening to and learning about what makes your body feel its best; what makes it feel blessed and not burdened.

Let me end by saying this, the clarity that I have now has not always been there. The Lord revealed what I had done, and how I had abandoned myself well after the fact. Daisy was a few months old before I realized that I had self-sabotaged and created a mess for myself and my family. Here we are another 3 years after that, and I’m finally putting my big girl panties on, acting on what I know, and putting into practice the healthy lifestyle routines that I committed myself to years ago.

The lesson here is this: trauma happens, time passes, God gives grace and hard work pays off if you don’t give up. I often wonder how my life would be different if I would have stuck with a healthier lifestyle all those years ago; but it’s never too late to restart.

Cheers to living and learning, and looking forward to great health in the future!

Love,

The real story begins in July of 2016. We had just purchased our current home and were embarking on the biggest renovation project of our lives. Our new home had extensive fire, smoke and water damage; and had sat vacant for almost 3 years. Read the full story here. As we were starting the long process of renovating, I felt like the Lord was calling me to share the process… with people… with strangers.

Now that seems totally normal now, because I’m a blogger, but back then, it was a very foreign idea. I had a personal Facebook page, where I shared pictures of my cute kids, and that was it! I had never heard of the word “blog” and thought Instagram was a place for millennials to share gym selfies and hate on each other. I had no idea that the world of blogging or content creation even existed. At that time I was getting inspiration and design ideas from Pinterest and the first two seasons of “Fixer Upper” with Chip and Joanna Gaines on Hulu. Remember, it’s 2016. We have no cable and no Instagram.

I remember telling Adam that I felt like God wanted me to share the renovation process on Facebook, and he looked at me crazy and said “Why? You think anyone cares? That doesn’t sound like something you would do!” I explained to him that I thought people might like home decor and renovating, plus I wanted to share how God had blessed us. (Honestly I didn’t really understand it either!) I even remember telling him that I thought it might be fun to ask for a poll when we were choosing colors and finishes. All while not ever knowing that a platform like Instagram existed! Wild right?

So with an obedient heart, the very next day I took to Facebook and was going to post some pictures about the house and how we had started a big project… And then something really crazy happened, I went live! Just on a whim… live on Facebook! Literally having no idea what I was doing! I can’t believe it, but I’m going to share those old videos with you here!

After that video was seen by a lot of my friends and family, people became interested… really interested. Everywhere we would go and run into people that we knew, they would ask about the house and when the next video was going to come out! So two weeks later, I made another one…

And then people were getting really excited. A couple of months later, I made a third video.

And sadly that’s where it ended. The day after I went live for the third time from the new house, I ran into an old friend and everything changed. She told me she had really enjoyed watching my videos and was excited about the house! And then she said something that no one had said before, and honestly caught me off guard. What she said next affected me so deeply that I quit sharing, and quit opening up on social media altogether. She simply said, “Are you trying to be the next Joanna Gaines or something? Are you trying to get your own tv show?” In that moment I felt like I had been completely misunderstood. I felt I must’ve been communicating wrong on my videos. I asked myself, “How could she not see that it wasn’t about me, but about what God was doing in me… in us?” I was embarrassed. I was literally paralyzed.

If you know me now, you know that I tend to be fairly confident in my decisions and I don’t usually allow a lot of outside opinions and influence dictate my life. That is true. Now.

I am here to tell you that I allowed one comment (that I perceived as negative), from one person, to overshadow all of the positive, encouraging comments that I had received. It was like none of the good stuff was even still in my head or in my heart.

I never openly shared again after that day. We renovated our home, we moved on with our lives and I never thought much about it again… until 2019.

In early 2019, after Daisy was weaned and I started to feel more like “me” again, I began to have a “creative itch” that I needed to scratch! (If you’re a creative person you understand.) Adam and I began brainstorming business ideas or ventures that might be something we would want to take on. This is where it gets really funny!

I thought of a business idea that would basically allow people to send me their Pinterest idea, and I would create it for them! I know it sounds fun right? And then somehow that evolved into us deciding we actually didn’t want to be making people’s junk… and frankly didn’t have the time to do it, to settling on a blog! I basically had a desire to live my life and create the things that I wanted to, and just share what I was already doing. When I started to look into it, I learned what a blog was!

Fast forward a whole summer, and Bloom Creative Co. was born! I purchased the domain www.shebloomscreative.com, learned all about blogging from other blogs, started writing, watched a YouTube video on how to work Instagram… and boom! I launched Bloom from my personal Facebook account on October 16, 2019 and haven’t looked back. It wasn’t until after I started following other bloggers on Instagram that I realized what my role on social media would be. I honestly thought I would be sitting at my computer writing blog posts and sharing to Pinterest. I hadn’t even considered the social media side of things.

I wanted to give it an official title because the truth is, I don’t know what the future holds! I don’t know if Bloom will ever include a service or product, so I wanted to make sure that I named it to reflect that. Now I see the word “bloom” as a constant reminder of growth, but also a thing of beauty. I have had nothing but fun since I started writing and sharing with all of you.

Recently though, I have had a chance to reflect on the events of 2016 when I allowed fear to change the trajectory of my life at that time. What happened that year was blatant disobedience to the Lord on my part. I realize now that because of fear, I took my path in my own hands and ignored the call that God had on my life. The beauty in this story is this… The plan he has for me hasn’t changed, he hasn’t left me, but it has all circled back around! I was finally obedient in 2019 when I started the blog and started sharing my life on Instagram. The only sadness it leaves me with is the fact that I missed out on three years of community. Three years of life experiences including health struggles, a second house fire, two pregnancies, a miscarriage, tons of fun projects and many of life’s lessons! I often think about how many people I could have met and impacted simply by sharing my life, if I would’ve just been obedient!

So, here I am… Almost 5 years later just showing up and doing what God wants. I’m sure you thought you were going to read a story about business, or about me wanting to be a blogger, or about social media… nope. God has to teach me lessons the hard way most days, and gives me grace for the in between!

I hope you found a little nugget from God in the Bloom story for yourself, and are leaving encouraged. As always feel free to message me on social media with any questions that you have and I will see y’all in the next journal entry! XO