Some Dreams Are Worth Coming Back To
Wellllll. Hey, girl. HEYYYY. 😂
Look who finally decided to open this thing back up.
If you remember All Things KayGee from way back when, first of all, thank you for still being here. And if you’re new, welcome! Pull up a chair because we’ve got some catching up to do.
I’ve started and stopped writing this post in my head more times than I care to admit. I’d get excited about bringing my blog back, start making plans, and then life would happen. Months passed. Years passed. And the little voice reminding me about this dream never really went away.
The more I thought about why I wanted to come back, though, the more I realized this isn’t just about bringing back a blog.
It’s about finding my way back to pieces of myself.
The first time I lost myself
Let’s rewind to 2015. I was about to turn 30, and I had a whole plan. Quit my job. Sell my house. Find a new job in a new city. Start over. And because I apparently believed I could rearrange my entire life in three months, I’d given myself until May to do it. LOL.
That plan wasn’t just about wanting a change of scenery. I’d spent a little over 11 years at a job where I put up with so much more than I should have had to. I was repeatedly harassed, and I never felt like there was any real justice for what happened.
I’m not going to unpack every incident here. That’s a story for another day, if and when I’m ready. But I do want to talk about what an environment like that can do to a person.
Because you can spend so long trying to get through the day, do your job, and deal with things that shouldn’t even be happening that you don’t notice how much of yourself you’ve started setting aside. Then one day you realize you don’t quite recognize the person you’ve become.
And I don’t know that the changes fit neatly into better or worse. Maybe you learn how to stand up for yourself. Maybe you become more guarded. Maybe you carry things with you long after you’ve walked out of the building. Whatever it looks like, it changes you.
By the time I was ready to leave, I wanted more than another job. I wanted a life that felt like mine. I wanted room to be creative, to enjoy things again, and to figure out who I was when I wasn’t carrying all of that.
I finally left that job on April 28, 2017. I know the exact date because I wrote about it in my old notebook. Finding those pages again all these years later reminded me just how much that moment meant to me. There’s a bigger story there, and I want to share more of it soon.
That’s a big part of where the idea for All Things KayGee came from.
And then life had other plans. Of course. 😂
Back then, I imagined creating a blog for women navigating their 30s and single life, because that’s where I thought my story was headed. Then, around my 30th birthday, I met the man who would become my husband.
So much for my perfectly mapped-out plan. LOL. I still wanted to create something of my own, but the story I thought I’d be telling was already changing.
It took me a couple more years, a whole lot of research, and entirely too much overthinking to actually launch All Things KayGee. When I finally did, I wrote about fashion, confidence, my scars after fibroid surgery, and learning to feel beautiful in my own skin.
Looking back, those posts were never just about outfits. They were little pieces of me trying to find my voice.
The second time I lost myself was different
And then came motherhood.
I want to be careful how I say this, because I love being a mom to my girls. This wasn’t the same kind of losing myself that happened at work. There wasn’t some awful thing I needed to escape from. Life just got fuller, busier, louder, and centered around the people who needed me.
Somewhere between the responsibilities, the routines, and trying to show up for everybody else, I stopped making as much room for the things that used to make me feel like me.
The interests I was excited about. The little things I took pride in. Getting dressed because I felt like it. Creating something just because it made me happy. Having time to think about what I wanted, not just what needed to get done next.
And the strange part is that you can be grateful for the life you’re living and still miss parts of the person you used to be. Both things can be true.
I wasn’t wishing away motherhood. I was realizing that being a mother didn’t mean the rest of me had to disappear.
That’s something I’m still learning.
Maybe this is me finding my way back
Somewhere along the way, my original blog and a lot of the content disappeared, too. I still have a few of those old posts, and I plan to bring them back. Not because I want to pretend it’s 2017 again, but because I want to remember the woman who wrote them.
She was figuring things out. She was taking chances. She was learning to be confident, scars and all. And she had no idea what life was going to throw her way. GIRL. 😂
I’m not that exact same woman anymore. I’ve been through more. I’ve loved more. I’ve had some beautiful chapters and some really hard ones. I’ve changed careers, changed my mind, and changed what I thought I wanted more times than I can count.
But I still love fashion, a good find, warm browns and everything neutral, a cozy home, telling stories, and sharing the random things I get excited about. So that’s what this space is going to be. Style, beauty, motherhood, home, wellness, honest conversations, career lessons, favorite finds, and whatever else feels like All Things KayGee.
Not a perfectly curated version of life. Just my version.
Some dreams are worth coming back to
Here’s what I keep coming back to: you can lose touch with yourself for reasons you never chose, and you can lose touch with yourself while doing things you love. Neither means those pieces of you are gone forever.
Maybe you have a dream you tucked away when life got complicated. Maybe you used to do something just for yourself and can’t remember the last time you made room for it. Maybe you’ve changed so much that you’re not even sure where to begin.
I’m not here to tell you to become your old self again. I don’t think that’s the point. I think we get to bring the parts we miss into the lives we have now, one little piece at a time.
So here I am. A little older, a lot more experienced, still overthinking absolutely everything, and finally giving myself permission to try again.
Maybe reopening All Things KayGee is about more than bringing a blog back.
Maybe it’s about remembering that I’m still in the picture, too.
If you’re finding your way back to something you love, I hope you’ll stick around. We can figure this out together.
XO, KayGee 🤎
