WELCOME TO NEW YORK

So, I’m sitting on an airplane. Tens of thousands of miles in the air, wedged between two ladies who probably get called “grandma” or “nana” by someone with chubby cheeks and sticky fingers somewhere.

I’m going to New York.

For the whole summer, I am going to New York to be an intern for a national business news network.

Me. This girl. A lover of glitter, leopard print, Sex and The City marathons and donuts with sprinkles.
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This girl is going to spend her summer reporting about stocks and companies and finance in the city that never sleeps. In the city that she told herself she would return to one day for the sole purpose of chasing her dreams. This girl is doing the thing she dreamed of when braces and Hollister flip-flops were the realest kind of reality she possessed. This girl.

Here’s the thing: I started blogging two years ago. I was sitting in a yellow bedroom in Houston, Texas that hopefully now belongs to some new-age preteen who uses the bright walls to cheer herself up and feel hope when life gets rainy. I hope it belongs to a new 15 year-old who appreciates the massive closet and oaky wood floors the way I did.

Anyway, I wrote my first post in that room. I wrote it the moment I decided that, while I didn’t know who I wanted to become, I knew that she had to be open and brave if she and I were ever going to get along. She had to be fearless and bold and tell it how it is.

That’s how it started. That’s how my little space in the Internet told my stories of heartbreak, fake friends, being fabulous when everything else is not and simply just learning to believe in myself (which is the very best thing you can ever do for yourself, honestly). I am forever grateful for Growin’ Up With Glitter, which I renamed With Love and Glitter (like I said, I like glitter).

I am forever grateful for figuring out that when you tell your truth, people really dig it. Better yet, they dig it and hold on to it and then learn to tell their own truth.

Isn’t that the purpose of this whole breathing thing, anyway? To make things more clear. To help out. To remind someone how valuable and capable they are when they happen to forget.

I decided around the time that I turned 20, a few months ago, that I wanted to start a new blog. Fresh. Clean.

I wanted to start a clean, new space because I feel like a new, fresh woman. I poured through all of the 40-ish posts I had posted to figure out which ones I should copy and paste into my new blog. Which nuggets of my past were worth keeping around?

As I looked over run-on sentences, grammatical errors and sassy bullet points- I smiled. I smiled at myself because, to be honest, I think the girl that wrote all of that would approve of the one who was reading what she wrote.

I realized that while I will leave a link on my new blog for anyone who wishes to read my older posts, they don’t need to come along. They’re crucial because they explain the path I took to get here and, in five years, I hope I can read this and smile at how much has changed. I hope I can be proud of all of the ways I’ve grown, helped others grow and been brought up by faith and the beautiful people in my life.

That’s kind of how the past works, I guess. It’s important. It’s telling. It’s our truth. We have to look at it, soak it in and let it resonate.

But then we have to move forward. We have to decide what we will let our past grow us, but then we have to learn to let it go all together. We have to realize that the purpose of where we’ve been is to simply be that…where we HAVE BEEN.

We can smile and laugh and remember sometimes. We can cry other times. But we have to be brave and let go and keep walking.

So, this is my continuance. This is my next step. This is my moving on, and from the deepest part of my heart, I hope you find yours.

Morgan