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

Month of death – with the hope of fruits.

My grandmother is the woman standing up in the red shirt. ❤

I know I know.. “Month of death” It sounds morbid, but that is what this month has been for me, for us, for my family. It’s interesting how life works, we’re all born into this world and we all eventually die. Some of us are scared of dying and the possible suffering we might endure. [I assure you we are stronger than you think.] Some of us are not scared, and gladly welcome whatever life throws at us, even if that means we leave this earth too soon. 

I have been away from the blog world a little bit because well, death. First my grandmother passed away, she lived a great life. She lived well into her 80’s and while she did suffer for 11 years, she had a great life. I was so grateful to see her suffering end. It was and is sad to know she is no longer earth side and I will no longer be able to see her, but her memories and spirit live within me. It is especially sad for my grandfather who knows no other life without my grandmother, his wife. They were married 65 years. Can you imagine, 65 years with someone? He stayed right by her side all 11 years of her sickness, and that is admirable. We can all aspire to be the lover, caregiver, supporter, and faithful husband he was. 

At my grandmother’s funeral, there was no eulogy, there were no personal words spoken about her. Everything spoken was from people who didn’t know her. Personally, I felt this was a disservice to the beautiful life my grandmother lived. So, I wrote one. The next blog post will be my grandmother’s eulogy that she didn’t get to have. While it continues with the death theme, it is a little more light and airy. I hope you enjoy it. My grandmother was a fun lady. She had her weaknesses, but don’t we all?

Two weeks later, my father in law passed away suddenly, and unexpectedly (kind of). I will say this is VERY fresh and still very much an open wound for the family so I won’t go into too much detail about everything. However, what I will discuss is the perspective of a spouse supporting and loving through the death of a parent. My husband’s father was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and died a few short days later. It was tragic and unexpected for him to leave us so soon. 

While my father in law and I had our differences, I respected him. He was the father to my husband. He cared for me because he knew how deeply I love his son, and he loved his son (my husband) with his whole heart. He was so proud of everything his son had accomplished, and so am I. We had that in common. He cared for his family so deeply, all he ever wanted was to be in the presence of those he cared about. Regardless of your relationship with the person, when they are such a big part of your life (father to my husband, grandfather to my children) you experience some kind of pain and sadness. I am sad for my children, they will never know him, they will have minimal memories with him, and we cannot get that back. My husband will go on for the rest of his life without his father around to help him walk through life’s challenges, and that especially makes me sad.

Death leaves us with a void, with a hole, feeling sad and sometimes even alone. Throughout this month I have really been trying to think about the fruits that come from death. From my grandmother’s death, I was able to reconnect with so many cousins, aunts, uncles, and even meet my godmother for the first time in my adult life. I know my grandmother was smiling down on all of this. I am making it my personal goal to not lose touch with this family I have had the privilege to reconnect with. My husband’s family has been able to reconnect in a different way as well. For that I am truly thankful, and I hope it continues to grow for them. They need each other in the healing process. 

Grief is a process folks. There is no start and stop. There is only a path, a road, a trail, that you continue to go down, and each passing minute, hour, day, week, month, year gets easier. 

This is a part of life. How do we turn it into fruits?

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.

 

Hey Coach put me in!

Hey you, and you , and you.. huddle up. I’m in! Like all in! I’m not going anywhere. I’m in on this mom-ing (no matter how hard the days are), I’m all in on this wife thing (no matter how hard the parenting and relationship gets), I am all in on my job (no matter how busy the days are), I am all in on myself (no matter how down I feel). Are you all in? 

Sometimes I find myself giving myself a pep talk like I am on a football team. “Okay, today, you are going to give it your all no matter what the other team throws at you. You are strong and you can do it!” Literal words that go through my mind  daily. No one is perfect, and everyone has their own struggles, but you can’t give up. Don’t GIVE UP. lf you give up, you are only letting yourself down. 

Here are some famous quotes by well known football coaches who had reputable careers:

“Winners and losers aren’t born, they are the products of how they think” 

― LOU HOLTZ

→ this is ME chatting to you. 🙂 [Can you imagine if you changed your mindset how amazing you could be? Wake up and say, today is going to be a great day and I am going to be a light to everyone I encounter today. I promise it will get easier and easier each day, but you have to start somewhere.]

“If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.” –Lou Holtz

[MAKE EVERYDAY COUNT! Live big everyday — for yourself. If you do that, you will radiate joy, confidence and contentment.]

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.” ― John Wooden

[Throw fear out the window. Give yourself grace. AND MAKE MISTAKES. So what if you take a job, move your family, and then decide you don’t like it… how were you suppose to know? Get back on your feet, make a plan, and move forward. There is always an answer.]

“Life is full of all sorts of setbacks and twists and turns and disappointments. The character of this team will be how well you will come back from this letdown, this defeat. You could still be a great team and you can still accomplish great things as football players but it’s going to take a real resolve to do it.” -Coach Ladouceur” 

[Mic drop.]

“Nothing that comes easy is worth a dime.” –Woody Hayes

[Hard work, passion, and ambition — you are worth it. SO WORK IT!]

“To have the kind of year you want to have, something has to happen that you can’t explain why it happened. Something has to happen that you can’t coach.” –Bobby Bowden

[Sometimes you don’t know what you need until you allow something to happen. And when you look back you will realize it’s exactly what you needed. Allow events to happen in your life. No judgement, no shame.]

“A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.” –Ara Parseghian

[You can be anything you want to be. Like for real!]

“You don’t have to flaunt your success, but you don’t have to apologize for it, either.” –Gene Stallings

[NEVER apologize! You are strong, you are worthy, and you are smart. Do not apologize for any of that.]

Are you all in? What if you woke up to a football coach motivating you every single day? What would they say? Also, just think about a football coach waking up next to you every morning in a huddle ready to motivate you for your big game (your day).. that would be funny, and also very motivational, and also probably a lot for first thing in the morning. BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE AWESOME!? Who is your football coach in your life? Motivating you… pushing you.. holding you accountable… loving you.. caring about you.. telling you that you are worthy… 

Get up! Let’s huddle up, let’s show up, let’s be all in.

xo, Jessica

Multitasking

Multitasking means you are doing more than one task at a time. Which if you think about it means you aren’t giving 100% of your attention to any one thing. People take pride in saying “I am a good multitask-er.” But are you? Personally, I always have like 20 tabs open on my browser, I can one look at one at a time anyway — WHY do I do that!? When I reduce it to just one tab, I am able to work so much better because I don’t have all the other distractions. 

The world has made us HAVE to multitask. Think about driving in the car: you have other drivers, your speedometer, your radio, your mirrors, your AC or heat, if it’s raining your windshield wipers… and then police wonder how you are speeding? “Well officer I was focused on turning on my windshield wipers.” You might get a good chuckle with that response. 

How many times has someone been talking to you and you’ve been nose deep on your phone thinking you are listening but then they ask you a question and you don’t have a response because you weren’t really fully engaged. How embarrassing! AND how annoying for the person speaking to you. The conversation in front of you is most important, unless you excuse yourself to handle something otherwise. 

STOP multitasking ALL THE TIME. It is not necessary. Our minds are not meant to be working on 5 million things at once. Have one tab open when you are on your computer. Set “phone times” if something pops into your mind when it isn’t a phone time, then make yourself a note either on paper or on your reminder app. Don’t start 20 things because then you have to go back and finish all 20 things you started. Start one thing, and finish one thing. If you can’t complete a piece of what you are doing because you are waiting on someone else to complete part of the project, then put a “bookmark” in it and set a time when you will return to it. That way it is out of your mind and you can completely focus on something else. 

Try something with me, notice I said with me… I need to work on this too! My phone is always attached to my hands. It is my life line.. so sad, but it’s the truth. Let’s allow 3x per day for 5 minutes each time to scroll/check email/do whatever you need to do at a time when you can focus your full attention on it. Begin to be intentional on all the pieces of life, be completely focused when completing tasks at work with one browser open, be completely focused on laundry, cooking dinner, playing with your kids, exercising, all of it, whatever you do focus on that task. I have started to remind myself in my head, “right now you are focused on driving to pick up the kids from school.” or “right now you are focused on cooking dinner.” It serves as a reminder to myself as to what I am doing (because I can quickly get wrapped into 10 million things) and it is a reminder to myself to stay focused. Focused on one thing. Distractions are going to happen.. if you have kids, they will inevitably need you in which case you say to yourself “I am helping the kids right now.” If you work, people will inevitably come into your office unannounced and you will have to stop what you are doing. The more you can keep your focus on what is happening right in the moment you will see how less stressed/overwhelmed/anxiety ridden you will be. 

WE are in control of our time. If you are constantly multitasking that could mean a few things: 1. You are not using your time wisely. 2. You are not actually good at multitasking so you are always going back and making mistakes. 3. You have too much on your plate and we need to start saying NO to tasks that are not worthy of your time. 4. You are avoiding feelings. 5. You need to learn to delegate. 

In job descriptions and in job interviews they will always mention something like “ability to multitask” what does that even mean? Do you want me REALLY to work on more than one task at one time? Perhaps the better language here would be “Ability to manage tasks from more than one project at a time.” I manage more than one project at a time all day long, but I am not always multitasking. I want to focus my time on ONE THING so I can perform at my best! 

My day looks a little something like this: Wake up, workout, put a load of laundry in the wash, make coffee, make lunches, serve up coffee (see how I came back to this project to complete it?), make breakfast and eat breakfast, shower, switch laundry to the dryer (again see how I came back to this task?), work on emails for work, get the kids ready for school, pack backpacks, out the door to drive kids to school… You get the idea. ONE.TASK.AT.A.TIME. Typically during this time we are in a hustle so there isn’t really a lot of “free time” but I also do not allow phone distractions, or other distractions (like the TV,  music blaring, news, etc) that are not my children who need me. Did you read that? I DO NOT ALLOW… because you are in control of that. You can choose to “multitask” or you can choose to be FULLY PRESENT. 

I choose fully present. Who’s with me?

xo, Jessica

Some multitasking articles that I read after writing this post.. and I found pretty interesting.

ARTICLE ONE

ARTICLE TWO