My first Sunrise post

I recently turned twenty six years old and although I still feel young and like a child, a good portion of my life represents what most people would look at as an adult life. I am a licensed doctor of pharmacy who works in a real life hospital taking care of real life, sick people. I got married almost two years ago to my high school sweet heart who I met in history class when I was only fifteen years old and I have a house and five animals who constantly need my love and attention. This last sentence makes me pause and realize how happy, lucky and overall grateful I am for this life. And then my next pause causes me to feel like how the heck did twenty six years of my life happen so quickly ?

I remember when I was twelve years old and thinking when I’m thirteen life will feel so different, I’ll be a teenager. And then when I turned fourteen I thought when I’m sixteen life will be even better because I will have more control and I can drive a car.  Sometimes I wonder if I spent my teenage years thinking the next year will only be better than the next and that I can’t even imagine what life will be like when I’m twenty-one, but that it will have to be the best. But twenty-one has come and gone (thank goodness) and I am suddenly pulling on the reins,  wanting life to slow down before I wish my last four years of twenty something into thirty. I’m starting this blog because my twenties thus far has been a journey I could have never predicted in my fairly predictable life. 

I grew up in a loving, nurturing home with my wonderful mom and dad and two brothers, me being the middle, only girl. We are a loving family who learned to work hard for what you had and enjoy life. High school and college both feel like a wonderful blur of too many work outs and field hockey games, trying and hoping to be everybody's friend, realizing you are not as cool as you think you are, constantly studying, eating what ever your heart desires and falling in love for real even though you don’t even know what real love is yet.

Although I know there was a lot of heartache and mistakes in those years of school, more than ten years later allows me to see the world that felt like everything in the moment is now a blip in time that continues to help shape me today.  I thought I was going to be an English teaching, field hockey playing, meat eating girl who partied her way through college because that was the athletic, fun person I was. Well lets just skip a few years ahead to the now vegetarian (sometimes vegan, but of course cheese exists), yoga lover, pharmacists, wine taster and wife who can only wave to the girl from the past as an old acquaintance who I was so happy to know at that specific moment in time. 

As am writing all this jumbalaya about myself, I’m hoping I am not the only one that felt this way in some form or another. As I’m letting down my guard, opening my heart, and becoming much more comfortable in my own skin, I am learning that a lot more woman are just trying to live and enjoy life and figure this whole adult thing out with as much joy and grace along the way. Anyone who is going to enjoy or appreciate or at least sometimes read this blog(thank you so so much), I think is going to feel similar to me in the sense of wanting to always look for new recipes that are just as healthy as they are tasty, try to create a home atmosphere that allows us to express our (and maybe our partners) inner designers while trying to stay on a budget, and learn that an evening cocktail (or two) is sometimes just what the doctor (or pharmacist) ordered to help us release from the day. Oh, and I can’t pretend that I don’t want to look like I just walked off the Victoria Secret Runway, but yet didn’t do a gosh darn thing to get there, but really I had to work out five times a week and sweat my butt off to feel good in my skinny jeans. 

I want all of us woman who are trying to figure out life’s destination, but enjoy the journey at the same time to know we are not alone. To know it is ok to share our highest joys and express our lowest sorrows and know you are not the only one. Coming from someone with more of a quality  rather than quantity sort of family and friends attitude, it is still important to relate to others and reach out and share in order to strive to create a more balanced and loving environment. I am going to take this time and learn to eat, live, drink, travel and I suppose exercise and experience this life for what it is and not wish for another year to pass. And I want to share it all and discover what it means to live along the way, be grateful for each day, and hope for another day to grow even more than from the day before.

Xo,
Laura