I haven’t sat down to write anything in a long time. I started my first blog in 2015 and by 2020 I was done. I was mentally drained, felt completely inauthentic and like a failure. Like I had to be some perfectly curated version of myself through my words and recipes, which half the time I wasn’t even eating or enjoying. Not from lack of skill- because they did taste good, it just felt by the time the recipe was thought out photographed and written my brain was fried and I didn’t even care what I was eating. In all honesty the same thing happens when I cook dinner. I’ll watch my family sit and (usually) enjoy the meal I just spent time on and I’ll pick at a small serving of it. Navigating disordered eating while also trying to portray a completely together mom who’s loving cooking food she’s not even eating? It was entirely performative and by the end I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt like a failure in every sense. As a mom, as a woman, as a “blogger”. I had no sense of self. I wanted to be seen for my recipes and writing but I also wanted to hide. I wasn’t even writing anything to be recognized for. The words I wrote sounded like they were coming from someone else, pretending to be a normal person giving cooking and home advice while hiding that I am in fact a mess. My house isn’t always perfectly organized, my kitchen counter is usually not visible because of all the snacks on top of it that haven’t been put away and 9 times out of 10 my kid’s bedroom door is going to be closed because it looks like a tornado hit it. My outfits are not always cute, my makeup is not always done.
I’m saying all this to be entirely transparent. I’m starting this blog, The Elegant Welcome, which can come across as bougie and put together. The last thing I want is to fall into the same habits and pressures. I also do not want to perpetuate the idea that social media is real life. We know that, we hear that and we frequently forget it as well. I don’t want to compare myself to other people and I do not want anyone coming across my page and comparing themselves to me. Yea I’ll have edited pictures of pretty plates but trust me around that plate is probably a pile of stuff I moved to the side to be able to take that picture. Maybe one day I’ll post a cute OOTD, there’s a pile of leggings I wore with t shirts and my old dirty sneakers to school pick up the other 4 days. There’s the ideal version of myself and then the realistic one. They both have their time and place in my life.
All this to say that I am going to be posting elevated every day recipes and discussing hosting tips and all of the soft elegance I do aspire to, but its going to be done while my high school emo playlist is playing in the background with an occasional cigarette in hand too.
Thanks for stopping by and hopefully you stay so we can be not so elegant together.
