About

About Jen:

I am a 30-something woman – a wife, a mother, a teacher. I drink a lot of coffee and I am what you might call scatterbrained. I am sarcastic and honest…I speak my mind but I would never try to hurt your feelings. I am sensitive and emotional. I am learning to be ok with me, just as I am. I am learning to be the best me I can be! I have opened my eyes and I see I am not on a journey of weight loss but I am on a journey to feel better.

 

I am what I am! 

and what I am is a work in progress. A beautiful and amazing work in progress. Even though I am working to create my perfect self, I am finally comfortable and happy with just being me.  I am a little quirky, a little nerdy, a little bit hippy, a teacher, a mom, a wife, a foodie, a life long learner…to name just a few. I am finally ok with being all of  these parts of me. I am positive and perky almost all of the time. I am a cheerleader for the people around me, I see the good and positives in people and I want to encourage them.

I am working on many aspects of myself but not because I don’t like who I am, but rather I want to be a better version of me. I have so much to give to the world but I have to first take care of myself. Part of that is losing weight and continuing the healing process from my surgeries and the other part is finding the balance that makes me happiest.

I enjoy blogging and I am going to blog this chapter of my journey because now more than ever I need accountability. I also am going to need a place to look back and be able to look at some record of what I did and how it worked for me. The near future is going to be full of adventures as I find my healthy balance.

 

I am keeping this next section even though I wrote it for my last blog name…it all still  holds true. I am still working hard to listen, learn and love my way to healing and mending.

About Listen.Learn.Love.Mend:

After blogging at  Jen in Real Life for the last 2 years, I have decided I need change! I have been feeling antsy since my latest injury. In August 2011, I hurt my knee one week before what would have been my second half marathon. I took that injury very serious and I went to the ortho and then physical therapy. I learned some interesting biomechanical things about my legs, especially my right knee and ankle. A few weeks into physical therapy, as luck would have it, I tripped on a dog toy and sprained my right ankle (seriously, probably the 18th time I’ve sprained this ankle). Because of this newest injury, I missed the AC half marathon and am now preparing for surgery. More physical therapy.

This latest injury has really slowed me down. It has forced me to stop and let my body heal. I have been working the knee and ankle at physical therapy but it has been a weird switch from training for half marathons.  Most of the time, I think I am dealing with everything and the rest of the time I am freaking out.

This is my latest chapter.

Here I will track my journey from pre-surgery to post-surgery recovery.

Here I will journal my journey, wherever the road may take me.

I will listen to my heart and my soul and my head. I will listen to what my body is trying to tell me. I really think my ankle injury was my body’s way of telling me I have to slow down all the way and build myself back up. I need to break my bad habits and really go after what I really want.

I am not exactly sure what I want. What I want changes frequently – when I first find something I like I go at it like gangbusters but I almost always let that excitement and newness fade. When that newness fades and I discard what was recently exciting, I feel like a failure. I beat myself up. I want to find something I stick with and enjoy all the time and I want to find a way to be kinder to myself when things don’t work.

I want to remind myself that I do love myself as I am. I am perfect in all my imperfections. I am insecure at times and confident at others.  I  am going to love myself through it all.

I am going to LISTEN to MY needs.

I am going to LEARN from all my experiences – the good, the bad, the ugly and the amazing!

I am going to LOVE myself!

By doing all this I am going to MEND – both the physical and emotional wounds that need healing!

Watch me find my happy!

I warn you (and myself): this road may be bumpy at times.