I woke up stupidly optimistic, which was my first mistake. Today was gonna be the day I got things done. I headed to downtown St. Cloud to my workspace. I made coffee, made a list, and even remembered deodorant. Hot damn. Look at me, a functioning adult. It was going to be a good day.
I sit down at my desk all fired up like, alright Elizabeth, let’s go. Five minutes in, I immediately dribble coffee onto my white tank top. Well, shit. I have a potential client meeting this afternoon. Now I’ve gotta race to the mall for a new tank top because HELLO, I can’t show up looking like a toddler with a sippy cup. Fine. Whatever. I’ll make it work. I’m a rock star. I can make anything work.
Then my laptop decides it no longer identifies as a laptop and gets stuck in tablet mode. Before I know it, an hour disappears into the abyss of “trying to fix it.” I attempt a “quick restart,” which turns into a full system update that lasts roughly as long as the Bronze Age.
So I think, cool, I’ll go grab that tank top while it updates. That errand turns into dumb traffic at 10 a.m., a light that never changes, and getting stuck behind someone paying in loose change like it’s 1994.
I finally get back downtown, and my laptop proudly informs me the update failed. Still in tablet mode. My coffee’s cold, my to-do list is untouched, and the only thing I’ve accomplished is burning through my patience and deodorant. But hey, at least I’ve got a clean shirt for the meeting.
Chaos counts as activity, right? I may not have been productive, but I was definitely busy losing my mind. Honestly… that’s basically an everyday occurrence.
For most of my life, I lived with this constant feeling of never being good enough. Not because I wasn’t trying, but because I wasn’t perfect. I told myself that meant I was failing. That I wasn’t doing life “right.” That if I wasn’t perfect, then I damn well wasn’t worthy.
Then one day, in the middle of yet another hot mess moment, I finally stopped and thought, Okay, seriously… what the hell is grace supposed to look like? Because the world’s idea of grace didn’t fit me, not even close. And it hit me: grace isn’t quiet, pretty, or wrapped in positivity quotes. Grace is the space you get when life knocks you on your ass and you get back up anyway. Grace is me still trying, still learning, still dragging myself forward even when I’m a disaster. It doesn’t show up when things look perfect; it shows up when you’re raw, real, and still standing.
And once I realized that, something in me clicked in the best way possible. I was done hiding the mess. I wanted to share all of it: my past, my chaos, my screwups, my current ridiculous life, every unfiltered piece. Not for sympathy, and definitely not to impress anyone, but because pretending to be some polished, well-adjusted version of myself was exhausting and fake as hell. And honestly? I think we all need a little more raw and real in our lives. We need to see that the people around us aren’t gliding through life, they’re stumbling through it just like we are. One mess at a time. So that’s what this blog, This Is Grace, dammit is about. Me showing up exactly as I am, with the lights on and the bullshit off, because grace lives in the chaos, not outside of it.
Welcome to my beautiful disaster. This blog isn’t about pretending life is neat, tidy, or inspirational-as-hell every second. It’s about dragging shame out of the dark and saying, yep, I’ve lived there too. I spent years stuck in my own pit of “not enough,” not organized enough, not calm enough, not successful enough, not perfect enough. Shame was basically my emotional address. Slowly, stubbornly, I crawled out, one messy step at a time.
And somewhere in that climb, I built a business, a real one. From the same chaos I thought disqualified me. So here, I’m opening the whole damn story: the shame, the setbacks, the tiny wins, the breakdowns, the breakthroughs, all of it. Not because I have it figured out, but because I’m done pretending I don’t come with dirt under my nails. If you’re here, you probably know that feeling too. Welcome. Pull up a chair. This is where we stop hiding and start telling the truth.
If you want to follow along as I drag my life out of shame, build a business from the chaos, and figure out who the hell I am in the process, stick around. Subscribe. Comment. Share your own disasters. Let’s do this messy, honest journey together, one fumbled step at a time.
