It may surprise you to hear that my life has not cooperated with the master plan I created when I was a young adult (back when I knew much more than I know now, which seemed like a good time to create a life plan, in retrospect).

 I thought it would look something like this…

• Happily-ever-aftering married to my high school sweetheart
• Putting down roots in our hometown & rejoining the community where I grew up
• Having a few brilliantly beautiful children & the opportunity to become a rabid soccer mom
• Becoming an professor of undergraduate literary geniuses

Instead, it looked more like this…

• A love life that looked like a train wreck met a dumpster fire until I finally married Mr. Perfect (more on him later)
• 14 moves in 25 years
• Giving birth to exactly zero real live human children; instead, my children include two amazeballs step-kids, a bevy of adopted nieces and some four-legged furbabies
• Career highlights that consist of a mashup of some adult-sounding things you could actually make money doing (And some other stuff)

Did your story deviate from the oringal plan as well?

If we back it on up to about 1978, I am an only-ish child (of a second marriage) with a  loving extended family on both sides of my parental tree. For a while I held the coveted spot of only grandchild. It was a good gig while it lasted.

Most of our vacations involved visits to see family. Relatives were who we spent every holiday with, no exceptions. There were family traditions on both sides. My grandparents hosted Easter dinner at the Yacht Club (humorous because it was on a lake and there were zero yachts); we traveled to the same little island beach every summer; July 4th was always spent in North Carolina playing cut-throat family rummy tournaments. There were a series of Christmas traditions at my Nana’s that included so many gifts and so much food that my grown-up self weeps a little thinking about the amount of work involved to put it on. It was a FABULOUS childhood, filled with wonderful memories.

Fast forward several decades to adulthood and I met and married -you guessed it- Mr. Perfect. (If you doubt me, just ask him…he has a sign that says as much, so I’m sure it must be true.) And he took me on a whirlwind tour of some of the most lovely military bases the east coast has to offer. Best of all, when I married that handsome cupcake I got two of the cutest sprinkles on top you ever saw. I fell in love with not one, but THREE people, lucky girl that I am.

Being the secondary household in a blended family, however, is not for the faint of heart, no matter how well everyone co-parents. It means that henceforth all the plans revolve around what the kids are doing and when they are doing it with you. It was challenging for me to go from year round family gatherings to keeping a completely flexible schedule so we could be available to celebrate when the kids were available to us. (Spoiler Alert: It was all worth it.)

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. This is a Marine Corps motto.

And it became the catch-phrase in our home as well.  Many of those fabulous traditions I had enjoyed as a child had to make way (with a little crying, not gonna lie) to fit the life I was actually living.

That life included navigating moves and blended family scheduling, making new friends in new places and keeping in touch with the old ones. It involved connecting with our extended family and friends from far away as well as figuring out how to make special memories with my favorite three people in this world with non-traditional circumstances. It demanded compromise, adjustments, some creativity and a great deal of flexibility. (See: Life in general.)

So if you happen to feel a bit like life isn’t going quite the way you had it planned out in your head…sister, I feel you.

If you have these great plans for yourself &  your people but they never get off the ground;  if you want to love the holidays but they never go the way you envision; if remembering birthdays and connecting with your tribe matter to you but you just never seem to find the time or energy to get it done?

Yep. That’s been me, too. We should form a club.

My journey of figuring out how to find joy in the life I was actually living led me here.

My goal is to share with you the ideas and lessons I’ve learned about how to best improvise, adapt & overcome so you can find joy in the life YOU are living today.

Not the one you hoped for or the one you dreamed about.

Today’s life.

Hang around, let’s hit pause on the ‘way its always been done’ and dream a bit about how to add more joy and celebration to the life you are living right now.

I’m so glad you’re here.