I've been thinking a lot lately about female friendships and the importance that they hold. During the last couple of pretty difficult years (my mom's sudden passing, making the decision to abruptly leave a job that I loved but didn't love me back, growing pains that drove me apart from what seems like countless different girlfriends), I've really struggled to hold onto a girl gang. A recent pondering of all these things and a binge of every episode of Girlfriends Guide to Divorce on Netflix (albeit cheesy but fun to indulge in) have left me itching to find my crew. I have wonderful friends that I've shared a lot of important milestones with (from standing with me on my wedding day to hanging out in the waiting room while I was in labor) but distance and my own personal lack of correspondence skill has made it hard to maintain those supportive bonds that we all see clearly defined on TV and within the pages of our favorite chick-lit.

I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20 and sometimes I don't feel as though I've ever really experienced what it means to have a group of women that unconditionally support and uplift each other. I can't help but daydream about how nice it would be to gather at home with a couple of bottles of wine and my best girlfriends to commiserate about being a woman / complain about life / just hang out in general. I've noted lately that this is something I really crave. It's something that I'm currently missing.

Why haven't I settled into a girl tribe of my very own? Let me count the ways:

- I have had an unconventional trajectory (a young mother who isn't necessarily living the glamorous single life in her twenties) and I find it hard to relate to a lot of women with different paths.
- Up to this point I have moved often and I find it really hard to stay connected with friends once I am somewhere new.
- I have impossibly high standards for people / friendships that I am working diligently to get rid of.

All of this boils down to a lack of being open to making (but more importantly keeping) meaningful female friendships and I'm so ready to put that being me. The more I dive into a search for knowledge about all things divinely feminine, the more I understand how valuable it is to have strong women in your corner. While I might have touted myself a self-sufficient person even a year ago, I recognize now just how much it would mean to foster healthy and beautiful relationships with other ladies. Female friendship is powerful and after all, no woman is an island.

I'm currently on a mission to make real, genuine and last connections with women in my life and to pour effort back into those connections that may have fallen by the wayside in recent months / years. I would love to start a discussion. How important are female friendships to you? What have you learned from your girl gang that has changed your life?

image by Benjamin Bruce for Aniela Parys

This is a blog post I never thought I'd write. As someone who has grown up online, I've shared a lot of personal things over the years. I celebrated the birth of my daughter with my first official "blog" (a side project aptly entitled 'For Lorelai' that is now cringe-worthy but also very sweet to reflect on from time to time), discovered my most enjoyable hobby and lived the year leading up to my wedding with you in real time. I have chronicled my journey from adolescence to adulthood and most things in between. I arranged run-on sentences about discovering your style and my obsessions du jour. These pursuits all seem so painfully trivial (minus any Lorelai ramblings and a marriage that holds me up in every way) in comparison to what I sat down to share today.

My mom passed away nearly two weeks ago and although it seems that life has continued to swirl around me just as fervently as it ever did, my whole world has changed. It is as if I exist in a bubble and everything inside is labored and languid while everything outside is exactly the same. I'm bowled over every time I head out into the world and no one else seems as shaken as I am. Although I'll probably never go into detail about our relationship within this space, the bond my mom and I shared was complicated (just as most mother-daughter relationships are) and her very being is interwoven into every aspect of my own. At 46 years old, my mom left this world and I am just trying to navigate what seems to be an entirely new planet.

As with all loss, these feelings come and go in crashing, bubbling waves. Some days I'm surprisingly okay and others are hard to get through with much sense of normalcy. It's been both a blessing and a hardship that, for lack of better phrasing, the show must go on. The morning and afternoon school runs don't stop for your grieving. Trash day comes once a week like clockwork and those bins must go out whether or not you'd rather stay in the fetal position. Work continues on, phone calls 'just to check in' lessen and your usual routine beckons like an old friend.

It's strange how loss changes and shapes a person so quickly. How it solidifies your priorities and negates all of the other things that have somehow manifested as 'important' in your life. How it reveals your true friends and weeds out the people that were never truly there for you to begin with. It makes you grow up overnight (even if you're squarely in your twenties, a mother, a wife and thought you were already grown up...). It exhausts you. It makes you angry. It makes you bitter. It makes you grateful. It makes you cherish the moments that you were able to have with the people that you love and helps you look forward to the moments that are yet to come with the people that you're still lucky enough to have. Loss is the most complicated emotion I have ever had to experience and I'm learning that I'll greet it and deal with it every day from here on out.

Over the past couple of weeks I've thought many times of returning to this little corner of the web. Of creating something frivolous to pass the time or to help take my mind off of bigger problems but outfit posts and things that once stuck my fancy just seem vapid. I know I can't continue here without first sharing this new season of life. I've had a lot of time over the last two weeks to think about all the ways that my world is different; all the ways that I should be or could be processing this information. What I've arrived at is this: I'm in need of self care unlike any I've ever had to give myself before. With every memory or fleeting thought I feel a pull to turn inward and be gentle with myself. I couldn't possibly entertain a schedule or self-inflicted deadline right now if my life depended on it.

In those long stretches of time in the wee hours of the morning that I spend tossing and turning while the house sleeps sweetly, I've constructed a very loose plan to dive into a period of extreme self care and simplification. I'm letting go of pressure and self-judgement. I'm working on getting past feelings of should. If I don't feel like vacuuming, I won't. If staying in our pillowy bed and re-reading a book for the third time sounds like the thing that will get me through the day, that is what I will do. This space may look different (although I do look forward to continuing to share the same flights of fancy that I did before) and posts my not come as regularly as they have in the past. I will feel honored if you choose to stick it out and ride this wave with me but will not be offended if you were only in it for the OOTDs either. Inspired by a dear blogger friend, I'm working up the courage to scrub my social media channels and start fresh.

It is never a good time to part with the people that you love but this period of change comes on the heels of some very big news for my little family. We are moving far from the comfort of home within the next couple of months (more on that another day) and it seems like the perfect time to make big changes all over my life. You see, loss has shifted the very definition of who I am as a person and that means that nothing in my life can stay the same. I am a woman in the making.

It's time to get personal... I have a problem.

I've been seriously struggling with FOMO (the fear of missing out) and social media exhaustion for the past year or so. Lately, it feels like everywhere I turn (or scroll) there's something amazing happening that I wasn't invited to or don't have the means / time / energy to make happen for myself and for my family. There's a constant nagging pressure to occupy some kind of virtual space. What started out as a fun way to keep up with friends, pass the time and gather inspiration has become quite a chore and a major source of self doubt. With a seemingly endless number of social platforms to maintain and a constant influx of pretty pictures and perfect moments, it's increasingly hard to stay afloat in this digital world.

A phenomenon brought on by the (mostly) new propensity to document every single aspect of our lives, FOMO has become more than just a cheesy acronym used to describe Saturday nights (or, for some of us, a lack thereof). For me, the fear of missing out or missing a post has become really hard to navigate. You may have noticed that I've been taking a step back on Instagram and sharing fewer posts than ever on this blog. My hiatus pretty much boils down to a feeling of "freezing up" and overthinking the content I'm putting out into the world. Is it enough? Will it resonate? Is it just more of the same? The desire to create bigger and better things coupled with the pressure to be original, keep up with the next five bloggers and be innovative has become all but crippling. While I'm still not in the best place with social media, a major period of quiet has been so helpful in finding my footing again.

If, like me, you're in dire need of a detox, here are a few (mostly obvious) ways to combat FOMO and social overload:

distance //  The best thing to do when you're feeling the social media anxiety is to create distance. Take a break from Instagram, unfollow the feeds that make you feel like you're lacking and steer clear of the problem. It's almost second nature now to reach for our phones and scroll through updates when there's a lull in the day or first thing in the morning but being present in the real world (read: not taking place behind a tiny screen) is paramount. Although it seems like completely giving up an online life just isn't an option anymore (I'm in major awe of those who can pull this off but blogging as a profession and having friends / family all over the world seems to prevent me from totally unplugging), you CAN control how often and when you engage.

worry about yourself // Your life is not the life of your neighbor. Try your hardest not to compare your journey with everyone else and remember that everything will happen for you in its own time. I'm still working on this one!

realize you're not the only one struggling // I'd go as far as to say that we're all learning how to wade through the ocean of social media comparison and the fear of missing out. While it may not seem this way (damn those pretty feeds and their way of convincing you that everyone's life is sunshine and flat-lays), we're all navigating the new digital world together. Take a step back and reconcile that you're not the only one having a hard time with this. Seek out friends or start up an honest conversation. I'm always here to chat if you're feeling down!

learn to see the highlight reel for what it is // It's not real. That's what it all comes down to, isn't it? Most of those pretty posts are staged and people aren't as likely to snap and share the moments that aren't all smiles. It can feel like everyone else is living their best life but try and remember that we all get into PJs and eat rocky road in front of the TV. Just me?

be grateful // Whenever I start feeling like I don't have this, that and the other I try to dial back and be grateful for the things that I do have. I have a beautiful family, a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have the time and grace to explore my passions and make mistakes. I have made wonderful connections turned friends. What do you have?

find social channels that feed you, not tax you // Taking some time away from social media has really helped me identify the things I do and do not like about it all. Likes: staying connected, sharing memories, being inspired, creating. Dislikes: competition, pressure, feeling left behind. I have weeded out the social channels that feel taxing (for me that's a few of the more boring outlets like Twitter, Google+, etc.) and identified the ones that feed my soul with inspiration (Pinterest and Tumblr for collecting pretty images and bright ideas). Then there are those double-edged swords (Instagram and Facebook) that seem to do a little bit of both. I'm still learning how to use these to connect in authentic ways and do away with the features that don't serve me.

get over yourself (sorry) // This bit of advice is more for myself but get over yourself. There is so much more going on in the world than social media. Find some perspective and re-evaluate the energy you're putting into things that don't serve a bigger purpose.

p.s. It was almost an instinct to sign off from this post with a plug to my own social media feeds but instead I'll say this:

You are not the summation of a grid filled with tiny squares. You are so much more than the 82 people that liked your latest #shelfie.

How do you feel about social media? How do you deal with the pressure to be the perfect 'grammer? Do you suffer from FOMO? How do you cope? Let's talk it out!