start here.

If you are reading this, its probably because you follow me on instagram. You are familiar with my love for champagne, sprinkles donuts, and my friendship with Hamlet the piggy! You also know that I have an obsessive mug collection and I love to style my apartment in fun and eclectic ways. Many people have asked me if I had plans to start a blog, but what they don't know is that I already have one.

You see, I've been a blogger for almost as long as I can remember, and an avid journaler before that. Most recently, I had a personal blog where I wrote about one of the most painful times in my life- my divorce. I was engaged at the age of 23, had my "dream wedding" at 24, and found myself divorced at 26. I am now 28, for those of you who are curious. I blogged as a way to write about all the things I was too scared to say, and all the shame I was too afraid to admit. I blogged to help me process my own feelings - feelings that varied from day to day. Sometimes I was angry, sometimes sad, other days relieved, and still other days I was scared. I blogged as a tool to help me navigate these uncharted waters - I was the only person I knew, at my young age, going through and experiencing a divorce. I also blogged as a way to practice gratitude and put things in my life into perspective.

My divorce is not the first thing I ever talk about, for a lot of different reasons, but primarily because it's not the most interesting thing about me. Nor do I want it to be the thing that defines me.

But it is a part of my life and my story.

So. In an effort to be open and authentic and practice vulnerability, I've included posts from my personal blog on this blog. Read them if you want to. Or don't. It's up to you. They are labeled in the category "Pre-pineapplesandcoffeecups". Some of the things I wrote at my lowest times, but I also wrote about fun and positive things happening in my life. I wrote about my foray into online dating, and my experience as I started dating my current, wonderful boyfriend Andrew. Some of the posts are excepts from a writing class I took through UCLA extension. I talk about my insecurities, my fears, and my faith. No matter your opinion, there is a lot of pain in these posts, so I hope you will be kind.

I started my Pineapplesandcoffeecups instagram for a few main reasons. For one, my life really started to open up a few months ago and I wanted a way to document all of the fun I had been having. I was tired of living in the shadow of my divorce. Also, I am a children's trauma therapist, which is a career that I absolutely LOVE and I am so passionate about, but it can be difficult, as you might imagine. Instagram reminds me that there are still beautiful things in the world worth documenting and exploring, even in the midst of sadness and suffering. I use my instagram account as a creative outlet - a way to document all the fun ways in which my life has improved so drastically.

I was having a conversation with someone recently about my divorce and they made a statement like "Well he shouldn't have divorced you and broken your heart". I thought about that statement for a minute and replied, "I don't think he broke my heart when he divorced me, I think he broke my heart when he married me". And the more I have thought about that, the more I know it to be true. When I was married, I was oh-so-unhappy, but I felt like I had made my bed and I needed to lie in it. I did everything I could think of to do to "save" my marriage, until that decision was taken out of my hands. And then I was oh-so-scared (read: scared utterly shitless) about going through the divorce, being divorced and what life would look life in the aftermath. And now I'm here in the "aftermath" to tell you that it's a glittery, donut-infested, laugh-until-you-cry dance party. Seriously, I do not think I will ever stop being amazed at how incredible everything has turned out, or how beyond thankful I am to be able to say that.

So internet world and insta friends, this is me. Wholly un-edited, damaged, work-in-progress, fun-loving, coffee-drinking, vulnerability-seeking ME. I hope you stick around. I can promise lots of glitter and spray paint and pizza making and book reading. But that doesn't mean this blog - and my life - will only include the happy and the yummy. As one of my favorite authors/writers/warriors/role models Glennon Doyle Melton puts it, life is "hard and good".

We can do hard things. But we can also decorate cookies and bake pizza and go on adventures and fall in love again and laugh with our family and snuggle our pets just a little too tightly until they squirm and accidentally scratch us as they try to escape our loving embrace. We can eat pineapple slices for dinner and go swimming at midnight and collect an obnoxious amount of coffee cups and food-shaped inflatable pool toys. And that's a life I hope to keep living. One that is hard and good.

*Hopefully more good than hard, but you get the point.

** Also I hope there are a lot of donuts. Donuts make even the hard stuff a little bit better.

“…sometimes the happiest ending isn’t the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are.”  - Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet