Colorado Girl in a Tennessee World

There is this idea that a lot of people have. It is the idea that if someone else has success, it somehow detracts from your ability to have success. If someone else’s life is going wonderfully and things seem to always work out for them, it means that there is less of that goodness available for you. This is simply not true! I want to talk about abundance. It’s the idea that there is more than enough available out in the world for ALL of us to have the success and happiness that we want. Everything you ever want for yourself already exists in the universe. All of the love, money, joy and happiness that you seek already exists. So it is more about aligning yourself and your life with the correct people and places and things to acquire the things that you want. I love this principle! I used to think that if I saw someone having success in a way that I also hoped to have success, I would not be able to be successful because that person had already taken the allotment of that part...

Hello all. I have had an idea ruminating around in my head for quite a long time now. I thought I would try and organize my thoughts here. Life, man, it's so tough. Glennon Doyle calls it "brutiful" which is a combination of the words brutal and beautiful. Life is so full of contradictions. Joy and pain, love and loss, happiness and sadness, heartache and fullness. Everything is a contradiction. Which, as you know, we need in order to truly understand the meaning in life. We can't appreciate the joy if we haven't experienced the pain. Glennon also says, "First the pain, and then the rising." We must walk through the valley of pain and loss and degradation and fear in order to rise from the ashes of our experiences and truly grow and change and learn. I think of the refiner's fire mentioned in the scriptures. We are the gold that must be put through the refining process of the fire in order to be made more flawless. More whole. It is so interest...

When it comes to birth order, I really lucked out with my kids so far. My oldest daughter is the perfect model for an oldest child. There are so many things going on in the world today and I just wanted to point out some of the good ones. My children. This post is dedicated to Michaela Jones Griffith. Michaela at about 2 months old. Man, she is cute. I became a mom on May 11, 2010. My water broke the day before and we waited and waited for my contractions to kick in but I ended up needing pitocin and an epidural in order to deliver her in the 24 hour window after my water broke. Every birth is special. But the birth of your first child is really two births. The birth of your baby and the birth of your motherhood. I remember nearly every detail of those whirlwind first few days at the hospital. My baby came out healthy with the sweetest covering of little blond whispy hair on her head. She was perfect. I can remember this time in such detail that it is mind blowing to me to th...

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.” Richard Bach, Jonathon Livingston Seagull Today it has been exactly one year since my Grandpa passed away. There, I got that out of the way. When it comes to my grandpa, I have so many thoughts and emotions and I have a hard time writing them out because it is easy for me to get overwhelmed with all of the memories and emotions. So, I am just going to wing it.  Grandpa and me on my wedding day. He was sure proud. My grandpa has been a rather large part of my life. Growing up in Denver, CO with my family, we lived about a 4 hour drive from my grandparents. They lived in Grand Junction, CO and my grandma still does. I spent much of my childhood driving with my mom and other siblings across the Rocky Mountains to visit Junction. That was what we did. All of our family vacations were to Junction to see our other family. I remember when I was probably 7 or 8 and I got t...

"Pain demands to be felt." -John Green- Whew. So many heavy and sad things have happened in the last few weeks. Hurricane Harvey leaves destruction in its wake down in Houston and other areas and displaces millions of people leaving thousands without homes and worldly goods to call their own. Not to mention it took many lives. We barely have time to catch our breaths and Hurricane Irma is headed for a different part of the country. I guess the positive thing through Harvey is that it made people take Irma very seriously and thousands of lives were saved because of it. And this is just natural disasters. I will not get into the political turmoil in too great a depth because it's just a road that I can't stomach at this exact moment. On a personal scale, these last few weeks have been horrible for many people that I know or who are friends of friends or acquaintances. I am going to list some of the suffering that just me or my immediate family and friends have been ...

Today is an important day. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love to read. Reading has been a huge part of my life since I was a little girl. I can remember sitting in my sister's room at night while my mom sat in a wooden rocking chair and read to us before bed. "Winnie the Pooh," "The Chronicles of Narnia," and "Little house on the Prairie" are just a few things I remember. My mom instilled in all of her kids a love of reading. I started reading chapter books on my own when I was in Elementary school and I have found many "friends" in the literary world ever since. I started reading Harry Potter in high school. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today is the day that Harry and Ginny Potter drop their kids off at the Hogwarts Express and Albus Severus Potter starts his journey at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (Spoiler alert for those who have not read the Harry Potter Books. Also, if you haven't read the H...