For about a year now I’ve been reading other people’s blogs as inspiration or pleasure reading or pretty picture eye candy. What I think I’m finally realizing is that these blogs are showing me a life I didn’t know that I could have.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I’ve been staunchly set on never having children for pretty much my whole young adulthood. Pregnancy doesn’t seem so bad, or at least it’s been pseudo romanticized enough for me to think I’d be all loved on and cute if it ever happened to me… but kids? They seem pretty much like non stop pooping and screaming machines.

Plus, I have no interest in living in true suburbs, buying my children useless plastic toys made in China, giving up my wine habit, or curbing travel plans. I’m really grateful to my parents for my childhood but, I just don’t see myself living like that.

But maybe, just maybe, that’s not what kids have to mean. I’m now reading probably 5 momma blogs and I’m starting to realize that family life can be whatever I want it to be. Drea is a gorgeous single mommy in South Florida feeding her babe vegan foods, taking nights out dancing when she can, and working in a food truck (yum!). The mommy in this blog just moved her family and her life to become super gardening homesteaders and are creating the most beautiful and delicious looking foods ever to sell in a roadside stand and spending time teaching their children about the most simple and important things I know – health and love. Ginny at Small Things homeschools, has one adopted boy, and her kids make each other quilts! And there’s a host of beautiful breast feeding, work from home, health conscious young moms out there with tatted up partners who travel or live in Hawaii or find life in the simple things.

So anyways, this has just got me thinking. Wayne and I define our life a little differently than most people anyways. So who says having kids would have to mean what I thought it did? I don’t know too many people who bought a house and promptly filled it with people they love. I buy my clothes (and, let’s be real, almost everything) second hand and speak my mind at all times and want very different things than to climb a corporate ladder and kiss ass. So maybe a family could be that way too – messier and a little harder but totally worth it.

What did you always imagine family life would look like?

♥ Jessa