Kelly Trepp, Author

With the new year right around the corner, you are undoubtedly about to face a flurry of New Year's resolutions plastered across your social media feeds. You may even be scribbling your own goals and resolutions in your daily journal, or sharing them with a loved one for accountability. Goals are great. I think we should all set goals and regularly reassess them and measure our progress... but when it comes to setting that New Year's resolution, I have a challenge for you. As the hours turn to minutes, and the seconds tick by on the countdown to our new year and new selves, I want you to ask yourself what it is that you want from 2019. Do you want to be the perfect mom (does that even exist)? The perfect spouse? The perfect disciple? Do you want a perfect body? Maybe you want to find the perfect job or the perfect house or the perfect [enter object here] that will finally make you happy. I have chased the perfect body. I have chased the perfect wife. I am constantly

As a way of commemorating the birth of my first son, I shared my birth story publicly on this blog on his first birthday. Birth is something that is not often talked about in polite conversation, and as a newly expecting mother 4 years ago, I had very few friends with kids to talk to (or at least that I felt comfortable talking to about labor and childbirth). I would like to keep that tradition going on the first birthday of my second son so that any expecting mother who comes across this blog will know that not all births are created equal.  But it is the unexpected things you can't plan for that make childbirth amazing.  Here is my story... If each pregnancy is a fruit, my first was an apple and my second was an orange. My first pregnancy was sweet and enticing. Everything was easy. I went day to day blissfully aware of this miracle of life growing inside of me, but I was able to carry on with my regular activities. I was in the gym four or five times a week for