“When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.”
Glennon Doyle Melton

You guys probably know by now that Happy Hour Mama is more than your typical fitness and healthy eating website.

I’ve experience and learned too much in life to think that a simple exercise and meal program alone can make you happy.

I think it is a BIG part of what makes you healthy and happy, but there more to it. My “secret ingredient” that makes people really achieve and stick with their health goals.

You have to have peace, self-love, belief in yourself and hope if all the lunges and crunches and kale are going to make a difference.

I created Happy Hour Mama because I believe women are beautiful and amazing and can change the world. I believe YOU are beautiful and amazing and can change the world.

You just need to be reminded.

So I share inspiration, motivation, tips, workouts, recipes and hopefully a little fun so that you can find happiness in good health, and can then remember how awesome you really are.

What I don’t always share is the pain that sometimes proceeds the peace, self-love, belief in yourself and hope that I want for us all.

It is sometimes the pain that helps lead us to our goals.

I got married when I was 21 years old.

My world as I had created it shattered when I got divorced 4 years later.

It was the hardest and most painful thing I’ve had to go through in my life. Most of it was my own fault and my doing, and I accepted that responsibility, along with the guilt and shame that accompanies a divorce at the age of 25.

He and I had what seemed like the “perfect” story. I had a “perfect” vision of life, including kids at the right time, a house at the right time and a life that involved all the right boxes being checked off.

We weren’t right for each other. Period. No amount of “perfect” could make up for the fact that I wasn’t happy and I was hanging on just to survive every day.

And doing a really bad job at it.

I hurt myself, I hurt people I loved and I hurt people who loved those people. I did it all because I was scared.

Scared to tell the truth, scared to hear the truth. Scared to lose what I thought was my one chance at “perfect”. Scared to admit that what I wanted wasn’t what I told everyone I wanted for so long. Scared to disappoint people.
Just scared.

I hit a pretty rock bottom place in the midst of all of that scared.

I was lucky to have family that was unbelievably supportive and a few friends who held my hands through the whole thing. I also had a wonderful counselor (after seeing three not wonderful ones) who taught me lessons that I believe were meant directly for me. They will all never know how much they meant to me during that time.

It was hard and uncomfortable. I lost friends and lost a sense of myself. I had been trying to long to be someone else for everyone else that I really did not know who I was.

I stuck it out, and literally was set free. Set free of trying to please everyone. Set free of my fear I was disappointing God. Set free of a need to be someone else.

Set free to be free.

I won’t give you all the lessons I learned here, because they are my lessons. I can just tell you that out of the most painful time of my life came the chance to do things again.

I lost my rose colored glasses, but decided the world was much more beautiful when I looked with my own eyes.

Harder in some ways, but much more beautiful and true.

When I met the man who would eventually become my husband and the father of our beautiful daughter, I could say, “This is me. This is what I want. This is what I can give.”

Our relationship has been true from the beginning – no misconceptions, no lies, no hiding, no sweeping things under the rug.

Yes that can make life more uncomfortable for us people pleasers, but it’s oh so wonderfully worth it.

My pain was real and intense and changed me forever. The breaking and healing and opening that took place after was the true miracle.

I decided to use my pain instead of staying in it. I used it to live a real and authentic life. I used it to guide me to the person I married, who is my absolute best friend and everything I could ever ask for in a partner.

I used it to make me less judgmental and love others more. To be more careful with my words and more aware of my actions. To be more humble and appreciate all the gifts in my life even more.

It took pain to reveal the miracle.

How are you using your pain? Our journeys are different, but I can bet you have experienced some pain in your life. Maybe you are in the middle of it. The question isn’t how you got here or what you could have done differently. The question is what will you do now?

Pain is hard, but living a life of fear and hiding is harder.

You don’t have to make any decisions right now or answer any hard questions. Just know that you deserve to live a life that is your truth. If you have had pain in the past, use it to make the world a better place now. If you are experiencing pain now, be kind and patient with yourself to heal. Then, when the world seems bright again, stand up and move.

There will be pain, but when you use your pain to help yourself and help others, it will lose it’s power over you.

Love will win.