I was not taught how to do all this girl stuff when I was growing up.
I saw all the girls who seemed to have figured out the clothes and the makeup and the hair, how to not be tubby, how to talk to guys, and how to just do that whole GIRL thing.
Me? I didn’t have the first clue.
So I put on a butch act and acted like I didn’t care about any of that stuff. I was pretty much an Amazonian with horrible body image issues.
When I got married at 20 years old, I became not only wife, but also step-mother to a gorgeous cherubic 2-year-old girl who seemed to possess all the girl-instincts I never had.
She was an everything-must-be-pink, tiara-wearing, tea-party-throwing, glitter-makes-everything-better adorable princess.
I was terrified.
All I could think was “How do I raise this kid without totally messing her up?”
I figured I had a couple years before I could do serious damage to her, so that was how long I had to give myself an advanced education in how to be a girl.
Always a fan of self-education, I threw myself into studying everything I could get my hands on. Fitness, elegance, loving the skin your in (this was the one that had me terrified I was going to mess her up), makeup, clothes, lifestyle design, confidence, charisma, cooking, health and beauty care, goal setting, financial skills, developing friendships, weight management, maintaining a home, being independent, living life as an adventure, and on and on.
Pretty much the whole spectrum of knowledge that a modern woman needs to know.
On a side note, one of my odd quirks is that I love to collect information. I was always that weird kid who carried a notebook everywhere because when I had an epiphany or someone told me something I thought was brilliant, I had to write it down immediately or I’d forget.
I’m a natural-born databaser.
When I discovered spreadsheets it was like the clouds parted and an angelic choir sang.
Yeah, I know, I’ve been told that’s a little freaky.
The point of this is that somewhere in my late twenties, it occurred to me that the rest of the world doesn’t particularly enjoy data collection as a hobby, which planted the seed that maybe I could use my special geeky superpower for something other than just filling up my hard drive.
That maybe there are women out there like me, who weren’t taught all this girl stuff from their mothers, who maybe didn’t have a well-stocked tribe of grandmothers, aunts, adopted aunts, sisters, and cousins, to help guide them on the bumpy road to being female, but who needed a place to find all that information without having to sort through a mountain of books, websites, Youtube videos, and study materials.
Maybe it would be useful to them to have everything already condensed into one convenient spot.
And that was how the idea for this site was born.
A place to be able to fill in gaps, if your education was as spotty as mine was.
A place where women can come together and find tribe, no matter how much or little they had growing up. Because whether we are two years old, thirty-two, or eighty-two, women need tribe to be emotionally healthy.
Over the last eighteen years I’ve learned, made mistakes, managed to rise to the occasion in teaching girl-stuff to my daughter, had three more kids (including another daughter), and through it all kept adding to the database of information.
I learned to love cooking, making my own beauty products, entertaining, and curating my wardrobe. I learned how to set goals, tackle fears, and take charge of my life path.
Now that my children are in their teens, it seemed time to do something with all that information that had been accumulating on my computer, so that is what this site is.
If you want to connect with me, you can find me on Pinterest or email me at MeredithKeeney@gmail.com
Recent Comments