Happy and Merry

Friends. I have been MIA since November. My apologies. I always hated following a blog where the writer would just go missing after a few months of good content, and here I did it to you. My apologies.

I have been honestly crazy busy — I launched a new business — eek! Can you hear my excitement? It has been a dream of mine to own my own company and do something to help others. And here I am!

INTRODUCING: Health and Wellness with Jessica Lorello. I offer group sessions for new and expecting mothers where we talk about all of the things no one talks about! For instance, FMLA — who teaches you to complete that paperwork? Childcare — how do you know what you are looking for in a daycare, stay at home nanny, or even what it takes to be a stay at home parent? We talk about the differences between doctors, doulas, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, etc. We talk about your rights in the hospital and how to keep hospital costs down, different types of birthing strategies, navigating your insurance, navigating tough conversations with your partner, and there is even a session just for dads. I wish I had something like this when I was pregnant with my first baby.

Along with prenatal education, I have a group session for postpartum women and women entering the 4th trimester. Both are very informative to that new mother navigating their way through life with a newborn.

I also offer 1:1 coaching/mentoring for college students and recently graduated college students who might be having a tough time. You know when you receive your first paycheck out of college and you blow it all on one night at the bar? Yeah, I can help with that. Or now you work 8-5 with a 30 minute commute each way, how are you suppose to wake up so early? How are you suppose to have time to do anything fun? Yeah, I can help with that too. Is your college student struggling to have a consistent schedule day to day? Are they partying too much or are they just not communicating with you? Maybe their eating habits are not positively contributing to their learning.. I can help. Finances and time management seem to be the most difficult for college students and recent graduates, hire me and I can help.

Visit my website: http://www.wellnessbyjlo.com — sign up for a service. I assure you that you will not be disappointed. I am beyond passionate about this and I am excited to work with all of you. We all have hard times, and while it might be hard to ask for help, it is okay. I am giving you the okay. IT IS OKAY TO ASK FOR HELP.

In advance, I want to thank you all for your support. This has been a long process to get to this place and the support I have received has been unbelievable. Thank you.

I will see you soon!

xo, Jessica

Simplify with Gabby

Friends/Readers/Followers, meet my dear friend Gabby. Gabby and I met when I was working at a gym teaching postnatal fitness. She had just had her youngest son who was 5 weeks early. In this particular class, I would set up stations around the room for the participants to complete different exercises while I kept the babies happy off to the side of the room. I knew Gabby and I were going to be friends when she came in to the class from this initial interaction… I introduced myself, she introduced herself and introduced me to her son, then continued to say that she would prefer I not take him out of the car seat since it was flu season and he was premature.

A momma speaking truth and not feeling shame to protect her baby – that’s a momma I want to hang with! Gabby and I have stayed friends even though we don’t live in the same town and I value her friendship so much! Gabby is real, she is raw, she is a giver, an advocate, passionate, loving, caring, thoughtful, smart, talented, she is definitely not afraid to get dirty, she is practical, she’s an adventurer, and she listens. This is a friend you want!

I asked Gabby to write something in relation to the mission of the honest truth blog, whatever was speaking to her at the moment, and she wrote about simplification. it seems so simple, but there are so many places/ways to simplify that we often over look. Read below about Gabby’s experience and feel free to comment with your simplification ideas/techniques!

xo, Jessica

“Simplify”

Every New Year’s Eve for the past 9 years my family has gathered with 5 other families to ring in another year of life, love and community. After we put all the kids in bed, the adults gather to share their highs, lows and either a goal or word for the coming year. We’re super cool, I promise 🙂

For 2019, my goal was “intentionality” and my word was “simplify”.

For me, these two things go hand in hand. I want to take the time to enjoy this stage of life with my boys, I want to make space for my husband and I want to be able to look back and not feel like I was sinking through toddler-hood. In order to do this, I needed to simplify my life and be very intentional with my time and energy (because let’s face it, waking up at the crack of dawn ready to roll does not give one endless amounts of energy).

Emily Ley wrote in A Simplified Life that “when we pare down life to its simplest parts, we’re left with room to enjoy each other, to rest, and truly savor life with all our hearts, minds and spirits.”

When I started thinking about my goal and word for the year, I had to really think about what I wanted for myself and my life for this year. Nine months into the year, it’s still a work in progress, but this is what I’ve discovered… I want to remember this time with my boys. I want to not spend all my time cooking, cleaning and keeping our home “functional” but also need it to be “functional”…I use that word loosely as it changes based on my mood, anxiety levels and schedule for the coming days!

So if those are the things that I want, how do I make this work? Our house cannot be a disaster zone and I need time and space for myself to reclaim energy and balance. These may not be issues for you, but for me, I function best in that space.

I’m still tweaking what works for me/my family as we go, but so far, this is what I’ve found…

• Declutter your inbox and social media and set time limits…I unfriended and unfollowed people I don’t know, don’t bring me joy, or haven’t spoken to in over 5 years. I took a couple of days to work my way through the thousands of emails hanging out in my inbox and made folders for events/topics that are important so that I can reference them quickly. I also took advantage of the Screen Time limits on my phone. It doesn’t completely stop me from aimlessly scrolling Insta, but it definitely makes me think twice about my time and I feel better when feeding my brain with interesting new things rather than other people’s pointless musings.
• Early this spring I took part in Emily Ley’s Ruthless Declutter Challenge (after quoting her above and then noting this, I feel like I look like a huge EL fan but I have to admit, a friend recommended her challenge and I just read her book, so no worries, I haven’t gone full happy stripe just yet). Over the course of a month, I went room by room in our house and got rid of all the things that were broken, excessive, didn’t fit, etc. I took 3 separate loads of stuff to Goodwill and it felt so good. I didn’t have to worry about the boys pulling out clothes that didn’t fit and the battle to have them change into something that did, I could open our cabinets without water bottles falling out, and I knew where things were that I previously could not locate.
• Meal prep…I need to be much better about this, but I find that our days go much smoother and I feel less stressed when I have our fruit and veggies chopped and ready to go for the day. I can then pull them out to throw in a smoothie, into a pan or straight on a plate saving me precious time during that awful 4-6pm time frame when everyone is starving and needs all the attention! Some days I prep them first thing in the morning while making breakfast, or if I’m really on my game, on Sundays for the bulk of the week.
• Shoes by the door. This is my most recent adjustment to our life. I’m working on making the change to no shoes on in the house…we have wood floors, I feel like I sweep ALL.THE.TIME so I’m hoping this will help, and it’s just less germy. I bought a big basket from HomeGoods, all the shoes will slowly find their way in to it and there will hopefully be less searching, less throwing shoes back to their rooms, less grime all over and less sweeping! Once can hope.
• This is a shellfish adjustment, but when I looked back over the last couple of years, I realized that I had read less than 3 books (for me, not the kids) in the past 4 years. For me, that’s ridiculous! I LOVE reading. It gives my introvert-self life. In order to pour into my family, I needed to get back to doing things for myself as well. I set another goal to read at least 12 books this year. I’m at 13 and it’s September. I feel better, I feel like I’m using my time wisely.

None of these things are completely life altering, but they are little things that I have chosen to try out. Small changes that make me feel more together and less stressed so that I can focus in on my family and remember this precious time. Now, real truth…have I been totally successful in all these things? Absolutely not. I still could put more effort into relationship with my husband and time with my boys. I decluttered my email and social media but still struggle with spending too much time on Insta/Facebook and have let my emails pile up again. I did declutter all the rooms in our house except two, life got busy and I never got back to those last two rooms. I meal prep when I can and our shoes will probably still be all over the house because I have a 2 and 4 yr old and that’s just life.  These are small things that help when I can make it happen. Do I stress when one of my systems doesn’t work quite right, sure, it’s part of my type A, enneagram 8, Myers’s Briggs J personality. But am I trying? Absolutely. Do my boys care if I’m not successful at being 100% intentional or simplify all the things…not one bit. They care if I have time to sit down and play trucks with them, run through a sprinkler or sing Blippi songs. And those are the little things I want to remember. I care and try to make things better for my family, but not at the cost of being with my family.

How have you simplified your life? What tools, tricks, tips can you share with us that might be helpful? What does intentionality mean for you? I’d love to hear what each of you are doing to be more intentional with your families and how you are simplifying your life.

 

The funny thing about social media

You know the funny thing about social media? One day I could post a sweet picture of my kids and get 100+ likes, and the very next day post something new happening with my blog and only get 2-3 likes. (those 2-3 likes are also people like my mother in law, sister in law, and mom — thanks for the support family!) Isn’t that interesting? Now I don’t know the answer here… is that people are just overwhelmed with the amount of content on the internet to read? I know my blog is not a cute picture of kids, but it is still good content (I think at least).. you just have to read it, you can’t just scroll through passively and like it. 

I have a friend who works in media marketing, and he said if he wants people to really stop and look at something he puts up a picture of kids or dogs. People seem to love kids or dogs. I don’t know why I am so surprised by this, but I am…

If you read my blog, or any blog/news source for that matter, and your brain starts to hurt, you should explore that a little bit. You should explore the questions and thoughts that come from reading all the material. You know how when you do a new workout, and the next day your muscles are sore.. think about your brain that way. It’s learning new things everyday, some things are worth your time and keeping them stored and others are not. You get to sift through those thoughts and decide what to keep and what to trash. 

So why do people ignore social media postings about my blog? I don’t know.. If you are afraid to click and possibly learn something new, I challenge you. CLICK THE LINK! LEARN SOMETHING NEW! If you are just not clicking because you are rolling your eyes that I have started a blog and you are mad/angry/scared that I am talking about these real raw emotions about things that are happening in our world daily to people you and I both know… then I challenge you to explore those feelings. Did you want to start a blog but you didn’t? (You should totally do it if you want to by the way.) Are you scared/mad/afraid because you want to do more but you don’t know how, and I took the leap? (You should take the leap too! Trust me, I have no clue what I am doing, I am just doing something because it feels good.) Maybe you just don’t like me or what I have to say.. and that is fine too. All I have to say to that is thank you for reading and taking the time to challenge yourself. 

It always feels better to support people in their endeavors. In the end we want everyone to be successful, right? We do not want to wish bad upon anyone. Everyone deserves a chance. 

Support your sistas in whatever they are doing.

xo, jessica

Blog life.

When I first talked about starting this blog, EVERYONE asked, “what is your purpose behind it?” My answer was vague it was like “I feel like I have a lot to say to women and to people about how to live their best life.” I didn’t want anything, but people kept pressing, “But don’t you want something from it?” Honestly, I didn’t and I don’t. I want people to read it and think about the topics in their own way, apply it to their own life, and hopefully it makes a positive difference in their day to day. Writing is such a healthy outlet for me, and lucky for you all, I have a lot on my mind. 

Earlyyyy on in my development of the blog, I think I said things like “I would love to get 1000 blog followers within the first year, and if I get a speaking engagement out of it along the way that would be great.” Which for people who need a true purpose or a true definite attainable goal, this works. 1000 followers in one year and a speaking engagement is the goal. I am typically that person, the person who needs goals to check off the list, but with this, I am new, and I really don’t know what I am doing other than sharing my perspective and my life with you. But somehow it is okay, and I don’t feel like I need the check box to check. I am comfortable writing and being in this space. I am hopeful that wherever I am suppose to go on this blogging journey with happen as long as I continue sharing truth and being honest.

About 2 weeks ago, I turned to my husband and said, “I think I am going to quit blogging.” He was stunned and said, “I thought you loved it.” I said, “I do love it but I feel like I am not reaching anyone.” And he came back with the truth I needed to hear, “But I thought you weren’t writing for everyone else, I thought you were writing for you?” You are right love — I am writing for me, and for you, and whoever wants to read. I enjoy filling this space with experiences, thoughts, perspectives, and stories of truth. I enjoy sharing with you. I enjoy this whole process. So thank you for being here with me, the journey will continue. 

If you feel so inclined, share my blog with people you think need to hear these words. Maybe share your favorite post with your friends. If you have thoughts on something you would like to hear about please feel free to reach out: thehonesttruthbyjlo@gmail.com you know I am always up for new and exciting topics. And if you need someone for a speaking engagement, here I am. But above all that, thank you for reading. Thank you for being here. Thank you for challenging yourself to think through a new lens. I love writing. I love blogging. So I will be here a while.

The sun never sets on blog life.. corny? Probably, but that’s me! 

xo, Jessica

My people.

This post will make me cry (and I don’t cry) because I cannot tell you how unbelievably blessed I am with the best community of friends. They ground me, they challenge me, they love me, they talk real talk, they care, they are thoughtful, they are beautiful, they are smart, they are fun, they make me laugh like big belly laughs, they hug me, they know when I am sad, they know what I need sometimes more than I do, they are my people, and I love them so much. My people are all over, and while that makes staying in touch sometimes challenging, I am very grateful for each one of them. 

Some of my people I have known since I was a baby, some since high school, some since college, some since graduate school, and some since becoming a mother.. I value all of these relationships more than I could ever express to all of them. (Cue me crying..)

Starting this month, I want to share some of the stories of my people with you. I want you to know that you are not alone. You may not resonate with anything I have to say, but maybe you are able to resonate with someone from my community. I want you to connect. I want you to feel supported. I want you to read the stories of my people with an open heart. Most of these people have never had to think deeply about these topics before, much less write about it for an audience. So give them grace and love. 

I did not give, and I will not give anyone a topic to write about, all I have said to these people is to write something within the mission of Truth By Jlo. (they are blog readers and advocates so they are familiar with the mission of Truth By Jlo) I ask that they send me a draft and I read it, send it back with some deeper questions and revisions, and then publish. This is truly their voice and their story. 

I am so excited to share my people with you. I love them. I value them. I think they are pretty awesome. I hope you love them just as much as I do. 

Find your people. Love them. Care for them. Squeeze them. Hold them tight. 

xo, Jessica

Blogging, what in the world?

Let me start by saying — I AM NOT A WRITER — like at all. Yep, you read that right, I. AM. NOT. A. WRITER. I actually went to NCSTATE and got my degree in Biology where the only writing you will do is explaining the results you got from a lab experiment you did. That’s the kind of writing I do. This is a little scary for me. Having a blog. Writing for people to read. Or just writing in general. I always feel like people have an expectation of someone’s writing ability, myself included.

**throws hands in the air** Oh well — I am throwing away all expectations of any blog or blog writer. And you should too. I have started like 3-4 blogs since college and none of them have stuck: 1. because I wasn’t being true to myself. 2. because I felt like if I didn’t have followers then it wasn’t worth writing. 3. because I felt like I wasn’t a good writer. 4. because I felt like I didn’t have anything worth writing about… Did you hear all of that? Everything was an external thought about what someone else would think! (Except for number one, but 2-4 contributed to number 1.)

I am going into this blogging world full force (despite what anyone thinks) because I have a lot to say. I want to share my stories with you. I want to motivate you. I want to share life with you. I want you to take these topics and have deeper conversations with your friends, family, daughter, mother, whoever! I want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to care. I want you to make a difference. Most of all I want you to love yourself. Like really love yourself. You are beautiful, smart, and talented and I want you to share that with the world!

My friend, who’s in blogging/social media world, kept telling me “You have so much to write about! You need to start a blog and share all of these things with everyone!” I would look at him like he was crazy and then come up with so many excuses as to why I COULDN’T/SHOULDN’T start a blog… I was JUST a simple mom doing typical mom things, I can’t write, I don’t know how to put together a blog site, what in the world is my focus?, no one cares what I have to say… the list goes on! I decided I am going to stop making excuses because maybe I can’t write, but I am sure as hell going to try! [You should know I cuss a little bit when I get excited/energized about something. :)] I might be a simple mom doing typical mom things, but let’s face it, no kid is the same, and parenting ain’t easy, so I am willing to share my stories in the full honest truth so you don’t feel alone, and because, I also need a community! [And I’m not JUST a mom, I’m a woman, a brave, powerful, strong woman at that.] I don’t know how to put together a blog site, but I am going to watch YouTube videos and take webinars to learn. My focus for now is being honest, because that is all I know how to be, but that might change, and that’s okay. And maybe no one cares what I have to say, but I care, and I want to share it with you. So allow me to HONESTLY share with you. The Honest Truth blog.

I ask when you read my words that you keep an open mind. That you challenge yourself. That you love yourself. That you care for others. That you are kind and free of judgement. That you love. And that you share, care, and love others. It’s a tough world out there, let’s make it better by being our best honest self.

Join me as I vulnerably step into the blogging world. eek!

xo – Jessica