The afternoon this picture was taken, I was holding on hard to a wish, and even harder to a relationship to which I was fearful to let go.  I was sitting on an unfamiliar stoop in Brooklyn feeling momentarily transported, but also terrified and lost.

What am I doing in this crazy city? Am I crazy to think I can write a book? Am I crazy to think that I am good enough? Good enough to seek out more, bigger, greater?

Why must more, bigger, greater equal bad?

This past fall I sat across a conference room table, interviewing with a beautiful, whip smart and successful woman at one of the premier banks in the world - interviewing to be her assistant.

I told her I felt confident I could provide her the level of support she required. She listened, but turned back to my resume. Why aren't you doing anything with your creative and communications background - she wanted to know.

Why wasn't I?

The answer came to me almost immediately, though I didn't voice it then.

Because you don't think you're good enough.

I am comfortable as caretaker and organizer, pleaser of people, recipient of praise for making another person's life easier, more pleasant.

I was not offered that job.

I wasn't surprised.

People are smart. People are intuitive.

My gut tells me what's going on before I know. It gets on my case, by waking me up, keeping me up, serving me telling dreams if I brush off what it's trying to tell me first through that simple knowing feeling at the core of my body. It's a familiar feeling now as a grown woman. One I've thankfully come to honor and respect. For a long time, I was unsure if I could trust it - if it was the sort of thing where sometimes it was right, and other times it was wrong.

But what I've learned is that my body always knows. My body sends shivers of excitement when good things happen, it aches when there is too much going on, it becomes susceptible to a cold when I'm not taking proper care.

My body is smart.

The afternoon this kind and beautiful and spirited photographer took this photo, she asked me why I was having the photos taken. I told her, almost mindlessly, that I was a writer and wanted to use them for a blog I intended to start. I didn't have a name or a website. I didn't know what I would write on said blog. But my body knew. My heart knew.

I let the words come out and didn't judge them. That's the best I could do.

That's the best I can do today too.

Honor what my body tells me, and take a step forward.

Xo,
Meg

What happens if I'm not who I think I am?

I've spent years reflecting on choices I made when I was a young woman, an even younger girl.

I always wanted to get it right. If I had my way, it would have been straight-A's, 1st place trophies all the way, First Honors this, and President that.

But I was an easily distracted kid, and an even more easily distracted student.

In high school, I was more interested in drafting the two page loose leaf letters I passed into my best friend's palm between mods. Those little expressions (musings on the boy I couldn't keep my mind off of, details of marathon phone sessions with said boy, the making of weekend plans with friends) were where I lived. Everything else terrified me.

Each time I pressed a note into my best friend's hand, the same fear was driving. Everyone seemed to have their callings, their places in the folds of the little world around me. I was awkward, shy, not particularly athletic, not incredibly artistic (like my brother and mom, and much later, my younger sister), though I had this vague understanding of my own creativity, the importance of expression, and the freedom and excitement it brought me. Still, I didn't see what gave me reason to be here, to take up space, in classrooms and dance classes and girl scout troops.

I lived for the future, ruminating on visions of a cookie cutter adult life where I married the boy from those letters, filled a beautiful home with Pottery Barn furniture, held down a "respectable career" (whatever that meant) and built a little life much like the one I grew up with - maybe having my children attend the same little Catholic schools I had just blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.

I thought maybe a little life like that would ground me. That all I needed to do was get by until the point I could claim that life for myself. I imagined an endless stream of simple days inside that little life would run into one another with a constant steady current, buoying me up. Everything else was just killing time until then.

But something changed during the the winter of 2004. My life unraveled further than I ever could have imagined it - first for my own actions and decisions, then further as a result of outside forces. Life as I knew it could not, would not, ever be the same.

What a blessing it was.

I couldn't have seen it then, wouldn't have ever been able to know it then, but it was the beginning of a beautiful winding journey, one that would lead me deeper and further into pain before it would begin to turn for the better.

I am far from perfect today.

I am far from the woman that teenager writing letters wished to become. But in so many ways life is better than I could have ever dreamed.

Today I live with compassion for the struggles of others, compassion for myself and my intrinsic imperfection.

Today I am the big sister I always wished I had to my siblings, and myself.

Today I work to accept that I'm doing the best I can.

To not live with fear, but with love.

Love for myself, for others, for the beloved and difficult equally.

To consider that the life of my wildest dreams might be something I couldn't have dreamed up for myself.

That to live with real love and honesty and intention places boundless opportunity before me.

I am certainly not who I thought I wanted to be, but in many ways I am closer to my earliest sense of self then I've been since I was a little girl.

And that my friends, is more than enough to keep me hungry, searching, building, creating, and most importantly loving - connecting.

Invigorated by the unknown.

What happens if I'm not who I think I am?

That question used to terrify me. keep me up at night.

I wanted someone to define me, point me in a direction, tell me the right way.
You have been built, placed here, specifically for this calling, this action. This is where you belong.

I wanted a sure thing.

Oh Honey, there are no sure things.

Thank goodness for that.

Xo, Meg

I was 17, my hands dug deep into the pockets of my grey peacoat, as I walked out of the International Center of Photography onto the corner of Sixth Ave at 43rd Street, having just visited the "Annie Leibovitz: Women" exhibit with my family.  It was early December, for a moment I was lost in the vibrations of motion and color as throngs of bundled sightseers maneuvered the packed sidewalks. Suddenly, a young blond in her early twenties breezed past in an emerald knee-length wool coat which screamed high fashion or a truly amazing vintage find. As a kid growing up in the sleepy South Jersey beach town, I often fantasized over who I'd become as an adult, and this young woman embodied it all - easy elegance, class, poise. I pictured her perfect little life - some sort of flashy job, a handsome Disney prince boyfriend, a tiny, cool apartment downtown. She was kind and beautiful and thoughtful, and generous. At least I imagined her to be. A woman of substance. A woman of worth. I pictured it all.
 
I had no idea how to get there.
 
I tried so many different ways. I fumbled over and over again, thinking that things would fall into place if I just changed locations, brands of jeans, friend groups, boyfriends.
 
But as Confucius said, "No matter where you go - there you are."
 
And it's only recently that I've come to understand that there is no official threshold to cross in order to self-acceptance.
 
I've marinated on many - If I just finish my book, sell my book. If I get a dog, or a new job. If I can live alone, have a boyfriend. If I am financially independent, purchase new clothing, shoes, or a handbag. If I lose 5 pounds, move to New York City.
 
Some of these items has come to fruition, have come to be truer than I could have imagined. Some have lingered, others cycled through quickly or morphed as I've continued to grow and change. Some have not happened and really there is no way to assure that they will other than to put forth my best effort.
 
If it’s meant for me, it won’t pass me by.
 
I've taken a long, and winding road to adulthood. But actually, really, that is okay.
 
I've taken a long and winding road to putting truth out there and allowing myself to be exactly who I am in this moment - single, with an amazing job, working on the book that was sparked in my mind four leap years ago as I sat poised on the edge of my bed in my single dorm room in Australia and heard my mind tell my heart, (or was it the other way around) that if I survive this, I will write about it.
 
I will write about it so that someone else who is experiencing similar feelings and emotions might read it and feel less alone - the most beautiful and sacred gift resulting from the written word. 
 
I've chosen the name Blonde and Blue for this site for several reasons, the first being that the sound of the words brushing together reminds me of "Tangled Up in Blue", one of my favorite songs by Bob Dylan, who I greatly admire for his storytelling. Blonde and Blue also happens to be the name I used as my handle during my brief stint on a handful of mobile dating apps since I've lived in the New York Metro area. But the most concrete reason I have been continually drawn to that combination of words is the simple truth that when I was born three weeks late in the heart of the Summer of '83 to a couple of surfers who loved dogs and music and the ocean, I arrived with white blonde hair and bright blue eyes and for better or worse, that simple description identity has stayed with me throughout my life.
 
Today my hair is certainly not as blonde, but my eyes are still that pretty blue that reminds me of both my grandmothers, one I know so well, the other barely at all and now passed on. They are both part of me. I am part of them. I find comfort in reminding myself that no one is perfect. We are all human. I have made mistakes. We have all made mistakes, and it really is okay.
 
I am enough. You are enough.
 
We are all enough.
 
Just as we are today.
 
xo, Meg