If you can’t cook, don’t tell someone their food needs more salt.”

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When my older two were little, we had a standing rule about food. If we were eating out, eating at someone’s house, or eating something another person had made (besides me), they couldn’t voice their opinion about the food if they didn’t like it. I simply taught them to TRY it and move on to something else on their plates… politely.

Last December, I decided to start writing a blog. My hope was that others could relate to the life experiences of a middle-aged working mom . Some people paint, go for a walk, draw, or choose negative ways like drinking or drugs to deal with life. I write (and pray). However, people started telling me how much they could relate to my stories and experiences….especially women. Writing is like air to me. It’s necessary.

My first blog was about perspective. Basically I said that someone’s life can look perfect (i.e. on social media), but we all have struggles. Since then, I have written about the history of the YMBC Ball, getting stuck in clothes and Mardi Gras dresses in various dressing rooms, going to said balls, lessons my children teach me about God and life, being middle-aged, various aches and pains, not comparing yourself to others, weird clothes at Target, the inconvenience of paying bills, babies getting up at night, baseball, children going to college, and I even mentioned a partridge in a pear tree. Oh, that was a Facebook post. Sorry!

Imagine my surprise the other day when someone told me I write about the SAME two things ALL the time (see paragraph above for proof that I don’t 😂). So does John Grisham (crime), Fannie Flagg (Southern humor and life), Rick Bragg (Pulitzer Prize winner… several books about his impoverished childhood ), and well-known bloggers such as Sean Dietrich, Amy Weatherly, and Susanna Lewis. I once heard a children’s author whose initial writings had been rejected say the best advice she’d heard was to write what you know. She is now an award-winning author. The advantage of reading is that one can choose not to read something he/she doesn’t like.

In the eighth grade, I began to write poems and short stories. My English teacher, Mrs. Moody, kept one and my heart soared because she made me feel as if I could write anything. I was the weirdo in college that enjoyed researching and writing papers. Professor McCollum at Hinds Community College also encouraged my love of writing by pushing me to go out of my comfort zone. So I will continue to write and write what I know… raising children, working, laughing, struggling, getting stuck in dresses…..

If you don’t like it, go get some salt.