There’s something strange about sharing your life online for more than 15 years.
People can know so much about you—your children, your marriage, your career, your home, the things you love, the things you’ve struggled through—and somehow there can still be entire pieces of your story that you’ve barely told.
For me, one of those pieces is fashion.
And as I get closer to turning 40, I’ve found myself thinking about that part of myself more and more.
Not because I’m having some sort of pre-40 identity crisis. Quite the opposite.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m finding my way back to her.
Before Project Motherhood, There Was Fashion
At 18 years old, I started college at Kent State University studying Fashion Design.
I was completely obsessed with fashion. I watched Project Runway like it was my bible. I dreamed about designing clothes, working in the industry, and building a life where fashion wasn’t just something I loved—it was what I did.
Then, the following year, an opportunity came up to study in New York City.
I was 19.
And I went.
Looking back now, I’m not sure I fully appreciated how brave that decision was. I packed up my life, left what was familiar and moved to one of the biggest cities in the world because some part of me knew I needed to find out what could happen if I followed that dream.
And I loved it.
I loved shopping for fabric at Mood. I loved being surrounded by people who cared about clothes and design as much as I did. I loved that in New York, getting dressed could feel like an extension of who you were.
Eventually, my path shifted from Fashion Design to Fashion Marketing, where I earned my degree and began building a career in the industry.
I later worked at Rosie Pope Maternity on the Upper East Side, styling women and working with beautiful luxury maternity collections. It was fashion, retail, styling, customer experience and storytelling all wrapped together.
Fashion wasn’t simply something I enjoyed.
It was part of my identity.
And Then My Life Got Bigger
Somewhere in the middle of all of those New York dreams, life started writing a story I never could have planned.
I met Chris at a Starbucks in New York just two weeks before he left for Army Basic Training.
I fell in love.
I became a wife.
Then I became a mother.
And in 2010, I started a little blog called Project Motherhood.
What began as a place to write about my own experiences grew far beyond anything I imagined when I hit publish on those first posts.
Motherhood gave me something important to talk about, and Project Motherhood gave me a place to talk about it.
Over the years, you’ve watched our family grow. You’ve watched me navigate parenting, careers, moves, entrepreneurship, celebrations, hard seasons, and countless versions of myself.
And I’m incredibly proud of that.
But somewhere along the way, something happened that I think happens to a lot of women.
One part of me became so loud that some of the others got quieter.
I became “Mom.”
Fashion never disappeared. I still loved clothes. I still cared about what I wore. I still followed designers, trends, and the industry. I still got an unreasonable amount of joy from putting together a really great outfit.
But I stopped talking about it very much.
Maybe 40 Has Something to Do With It
I turn 40 in October.
There’s something about that number that has made me incredibly reflective—not necessarily about where I thought I would be by now, but about who I’ve been along the way.
The 18-year-old studying Fashion Design.
The 19-year-old brave enough to move to New York.
The young woman building a career.
The wife.
The mother.
The entrepreneur.
The marketer.
The woman I am right now.
For a long time, I think I assumed personal growth meant constantly becoming someone new.
Now I’m starting to believe something different.
Sometimes growth is about returning to yourself.
It’s remembering the things that excited you before life became so full of responsibilities.
It’s realizing motherhood can be one of the biggest pieces of your identity without needing to be the only one.
It’s allowing yourself to care about something simply because it brings you joy.
And yes, sometimes it’s wearing the beautiful dress on an ordinary Tuesday because you finally understand that you don’t need an invitation to enjoy your own clothes.
So, Project Motherhood Is Evolving
You’re going to notice more fashion here.
A lot more.
I want to talk about personal style and how it changes as we do.
I want to answer the fashion questions women are actually asking: What do I wear? How do I style this? Is this worth investing in? Does this designer run true to size? How do I incorporate a trend without feeling like I’m wearing a costume?
There will be designer fashion and incredible affordable finds.
There will be outfit formulas, styling advice, trends I love and probably a few I absolutely do not.
I want to talk about the pieces worth saving for, the things you absolutely don’t need to spend a fortune on, and why sometimes the most interesting outfit includes both.
I want to share more of my fashion education and the experiences I’ve rarely talked about here.
And I want to explore what personal style looks like when you’re approaching 40 and you know yourself better than you did at 20—but your body, lifestyle and priorities may look completely different.
But I hope what we build here becomes about something bigger than clothes.
Because I don’t think this is really a story about fashion.
I think it’s a story about giving ourselves permission to take up space in our own lives again.
To have interests outside of the people we care for.
To change our minds.
To revisit old dreams.
To get dressed for the bodies we have today.
To stop saving everything—the dress, the bag, the trip, the idea, the dream—for “someday.”
And to understand that getting older doesn’t mean becoming less interesting, less ambitious, less stylish or less ourselves.
Maybe this is the age when we finally have enough confidence to become more of ourselves.
So if you’ve been reading Project Motherhood since those early days, thank you for growing up with me.
And if you’re new here, you picked a pretty exciting time to arrive.
I’m not starting over.
I’m bringing all the versions of myself with me.
This isn’t a reinvention.
It’s a return.
And I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
