Get to know me

Hey! So glad to have you here! Let’s take a moment to introduce myself.

I’m so excited to begin this new chapter in my life. I wanted to take a moment to allow my readers to know a little more about the author.

I’m a young mom of two and a military spouse. I have always had a love for writing and adventures. Ever since a young age my family would spend our summers traveling. I was always taught to love and respect others and their cultures. These are values I brought with me in adulthood and teach my children as well.

Yep! That is little me just beginning her love in storytelling. As I grew up I discovered how much I love animals and nature. During highschool is when I realized I could use my voice for animals. I joined my school’s wildlife conservation club and eventually became president. It may have been small but to me it meant the world.

Highschool lead me to some wonderful people and lifelong friendships. Some of those friends and I decided to come together and do volunteer work for shelter animals. We helped with drives for shelter animals, but we wanted to do more for the animals and our community. After lots of brainstorming and research we decided that our community was in need of a dog park. As a bunch of high schoolers it was a big dream turned to action.

Our group was determined to make this plan an action and started to get everything together. This group of young 7 high schoolers sat down and met with our county commissioner to discuss our plan. Everything was going smoothly and we were so excited, until Covid hit. As much as Covid affected everyone it hit us hard. Schools shut down, stuck at home, struggling with online classes, and our plan gone. Adjusting from being so highly involved in my community to not being able to leave the house affected me mentally and physically.

When everything started to get back to normal I was unsure of what to do anymore. I began leading the conversation club but still had a longing to do more. My interest turned towards marine life. My senior year I decided to apply for a college class built for highschool students in oceanography/Marine biology. Between beach cleanups, teaching field trips, school, and working my schedule stayed filled up. I learned so much, it would need a whole different blog just about that class and everything I did.

I had planned to go to college for marine biology but as I learned before, life doesn’t always go according to plan. I met my husband and pregnant was with my firstborn. It was a huge change. I come from a fairly large family, no seriously it takes two hands to count my siblings. But being a mother myself was a lot different than just being the older sister. As me and my husband began preparing for the arrival of my daughter we realized our life had so much ahead of us.

I had to learn the aspects of being a military spouse and a new mom at such a young age. It changed a lot of my perspectives in life. When my daughter was born I was in pure shock! You always hear about how sentimental that moment is when your new baby is set on your chest, but no one prepares you about how much it really means. For a good minute I just sat staring at her and the only thing running through my head was; no way I just pushed this baby out of me. Once my head wrapped around the realization that this is MY baby, I couldn’t have been any happier. Tears of joy in my eyes.

The first moment alone with my daughter and husband overwhelmed me. I sat in the moment taking in my little family and life I have. I felt so lucky and grateful to have them. Time went on and I started to get the hang of being a mom. We decided it would be best for me to be a stay at home mom to raise her. We would later discover I would be pregnant with my second and have two under two. We were so excited that we would be welcoming a sibling so close in age.

Soon after the birth of my second, my husband had to leave for training in another state. Trying to balance being freshly post partum with two children and not having my husband with me showed me the hard aspects of being a military spouse. With huge support from our families we all made it through that time. We then got stationed to another place, when we’ve been so lucky before being close to both our families.

It is the farthest any of us have lived from our families and that is a struggle in itself. Through the hardships we always find joy in being together as our family. That leads us to now, thousands of miles away from loved ones, but enjoying everything in our lives. I am excited to share my personal journey of navigating the way of motherhood to all my readers, and hope to learn a thing or two from this new chapter.

Thank you for tuning in and be sure to follow along for more adventures with Momma Jitterbug.