Briefly
Finding joy in the not-quite-there.
The Whole Story
Au Coeur means “at heart”.
I’ve blogged off and on since middle school (back before online journals were even called blogs), took a break toward the end of college, and then, as I neared my twenty-fifth birthday, felt the itch to start blogging again. Now, that I’ve lived long enough to truly understanding who and where I want to be in life, it’s just a matter of getting there; Au Coeur is a blog about striving to match reality to that dream for myself. It is a blog about finding joy on the road to becoming who I am at heart, even in moments when joy feels out of reach — what I call the “not-quite-there.”
This blog, this path, has taken me from the life of a full-time working mother in New York’s Hudson Valley to the life of a stay/work-at-home mother in Nantucket, and in February of this year to Wyoming cowboy country and a life I am still figuring out. I write about balancing freelance work with family, starting/owning a business, mothering my daughters, attempting to meet personal goals, and trying to keep a clean house all at the same time.
Me
I am the kind of person who always knew I wanted to be a mother – to the degree that, as a middle schooler, I often imagined finding a baby and being allowed to keep it. Now that I am a mother, I am the happiest I have ever been in my life and I love nothing more than sharing photographs and stories of my girls with every single person who crosses my path. I like things from the 40′s and 50′s, and somehow manage to combine old fashioned ideologies with an extremely liberal social perspective. In another life, I would have made a great home economics teacher…except for my intense dislike of dish washing. I am interested in environmentally and sustainably sound living, which led to an interest in natural parenting, childbirth, and breastfeeding; baking delicious and dangerous things; gardening, voluntary simplicity, and co-housing. Two months after my 25th birthday, I quit my job as Director of Recruiting for a college in New York, and moved with my husband and first daughter to Nantucket where I was lucky enough to be able to stay at home and devote my full attention to raising my daughter, running our household, and supplementing my husband’s income through a million different side projects. In December 2010, I became a Certified Lactation Counselor so that I could help other mamas to have great nursing relationships, like I had with Nora. Not long after, I became a La Leche League Leader; I dream of someday opening a natural maternity and baby boutique. Somehow, I also stumbled into website design and development, and now spend most post-bedtime hours building beautiful WordPress powered websites for clients from Nantucket to Texas and beyond.
In November of 2012, when I was seven months pregnant with our second daughter, we received news that turned our world upside down: the restaurant where my husband worked decided to go seasonal, leaving us with no income just as baby two arrived. What started out terrifying has turned into a blessing in disguise, and has led us to our next adventure. Six weeks after an amazing home birth, we packed up our belongings, loaded our car and drove across country with a preschooler, newborn, and a dog to start a new life in Wyoming.
Contact
Have something to say? The easiest way to comment about something I’ve written is to leave it in the comments of the post it relates to. Emails can take me quite a while to respond to, but I almost always respond to comments within a 24-hour period. If you do want to email me, you can do so below. You can see my website design portfolio or find out more about hiring me to build your website at aucoeurdesign.com.