“It’s like flipping on a light switch,” she said. She being a representative from a local advertising agency. Her presentation was on branding during a Women in Business Unlimited luncheon I attended. The “flip the switch” comment was her response to my loaded question, “how do you get to a point where you know you’re ready to launch your brand?” I was asking this question in reference to my desire to get SisterWomen kicked off. I’ve been contemplating for some time in my head how on earth I should start this blog. It’s one of those things where one can only feel that it’s important to make sure you start off on the right foot. I mean, the first blog is the preface to it all right? Well that would be just dandy but it just ain’t gonna happen. If I strive to write the perfect first entry it’ll never get published. So I’ll only preface by apologizing for some of the randomness (and grammatical errors) you may experience as we progressively elaborate on our SisterWomen mission. Hopefully you stay tuned and keep up…and hopefully we make it worth your while.

So, since we’ve covered that this first entry isn’t going to be the most perfect preface to what I hope is an incredible adventure in inspiration, I’ll at least tell you why the heck we’re even doing this.

I decided to start this community for a number of reasons. I absolutely LOVE to  share experiences and interact with others. Growing up the stories I shared were full of complete idiocy (tomboy wild child here), bad strings of luck (like the time a random mouse crawled in my lap while I was driving 75mph on the interstate) and of course plenty of teenage and twenty something ridiculousness (I sometimes wish I could go back in time and backhand some sense across my face).  It wasn’t until my 28th year of living when I got pregnant by surprise that life started to become what I like to say, “significant.” That was four years ago and life has been an eventful roller coaster ever since. There are plenty of future blogs where I’ll further detail how much I loved being pregnant, how the love of my life was the perfect partner through it all, how mad I was that no books prepared me for the post birth experience complete with the cheesecloth spanks, tucks pads, the glorious ice diaper, the biggest maxi pads I have ever seen let alone worn, and the glamorous bathroom squirt bottle (“I gotta pee, I’ll be back in twenty minutes”). In addition there will be references to how that “love of my life” and I were referred to as a fairy tale couple with a fairy tale wedding followed months later by infidelity, alcohol abuse, and the painful process of divorce. Additionally the challenges and rewards of being a single parent and how my beautiful daughter saved my life by simply existing. Moreover, how I found the value of having SisterWomen in your life to help you through that journey of discovering your inner self…even if it’s discovering your new inner self.  This all brings me to SisterWomen.

OK it’s not always going to be all sappy and dreadful. I PROMISE the majority of what you’ll find here colorful stories and thought provoking posts that I hope will leave you feeling inspired as well as giving you a desire to inspire others. They will be stories of triumph, rediscovery of the inner self, the fun and the not so fun part about dating…again, cooking, fitness and health, the power of to do lists, the forgiveness journey, travel and fun, fashion and decor….ohhhhh the list can go on forever. Simply, our goal as SisterWomen are to bring women together to share these experiences and success stories that enable us all to make the choice to be strong, confident, and beautiful. Don’t worry, it won’t be all serious and deep like this blog got halfway through (oopsies). In fact if things evolve the way I envision, it will be light hearted and fun and there will probably be plenty of inappropriateness in there too. Ok…probably a lot of inappropriateness….but in a fun way.

So really its these past four years that have really shifted me as an individual. I made a decision to partner with my sister-in law…or is it ex-sister-in-law? Oh, whatever. She’s “My Dear Cynthia” as I like to call her. She’s been through thick and thin herself and she’s one hell of a cook, a fitness guru, and one of the strongest women I know. You’ll be hearing a lot from her as well. She’s the more refined one of us and you’ll learn how we became SisterWomen living in our “house of healing.” Together we are passionate about many of the same things in which you’ll get to read about and hopefully as a result we’ll be bringing women together fostering an environment to empower women to be strong, confident, and beautiful. The blog is just the beginning. We’re glad you’re here and we can’t wait to hear from you because we know you all have your own significant contributions whether it be your own experiences or those of others. We’re all just women helping women here.

Whew…I did it…post #1. It’s downhill from here ladies. Let’s do this!