ANOTHER JOURNAL ENTRY | Katie Huntley

  I can honestly say that so far I’ve enjoyed my 30’s more than my 20’s (a sentence I never thought I’d say). Why? I think mostly because I know myself more. I’m confident in who I am and what I want in life. Do I have it all figured out? Not even close, but I’ve learned a few lessons over the past 32 years and wanted to share them with you today. God is real. Heaven is real. People make time for the people they want to make time for. This is just a fact. Life is like chutes and ladders. You wanna take a short cut and not put in the work? Look out for the slide right around the corner, cause you’re going back down eventually. Hard work pays off and if you want to have sustainability in what you do, there are no shortcuts. Put in the work, one day at a time. “The person you see at the top of the mountain? They didn’t fall there, they climbed every step of the way.” If a guy likes you, you will know. If you aren’t sure, he’s not that into you. Walk away happy you missed the bullshit....

One of the things that have always put me in a good headspace and cleared up my anxiety is putting on some good music and just driving.  A couple weeks ago, I decided to go out and visit my dad's grave and so my best friend and I loaded up and took backroads out to the cemetery.  This is the community that I grew up in - it was bittersweet driving out there.

Grief. Where do I even start? I’ve tried to sit down and write this post so many times, but the truth is, sitting down to write means reliving everything I’ve been through in the past year and a half. I want to start with a disclaimer: I am not a therapist, a doctor, or anyone claiming I know what is right. Instead, I’m just a girl who has been through some really hard shit. I’ve walked through it, I’ve lived with it, and today I’m finally ready to share my story. Maybe you’ve never experienced anything like I have. I pray you haven’t. It’s not a fun club to be a member of, although, I know many of you are from talking to you. Maybe grief has looked different for you, and that’s ok. In fact, that’s lesson number one. If there is one thing I can tell you, it’s that grief looks different for everyone. We’re all human. We all feel things. We all have eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but we aren’t all exactly the same. We need different things, express love in various ways, and ...

It has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of life. I learned everything is temporary; moments, feelings, people, flowers... I learned that love is about giving, everything, and letting it hurt. I learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. I learned all things come in twos: life and death, pain and joy, salt and sugar, me and you... it is a balance of the universe. It has been a year of hurting so bad but living so good, making friends out of strangers, making strangers out of friends. I learned that when mint chocolate chip can't fix things, there will always be my mother's arms. We must learn to focus on warm energy, always soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world: for if we can't be kind to each other, how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves? Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Grace. Something I’ve been learning over and over lately. It’s an incredible thing. It’s also a remarkably difficult feeling to hold. It’s completely against human nature to want to love someone when I know the feeling won’t be reciprocated. I want revenge. I want them to suffer. I want them to feel the way I feel. I rarely admit to myself that revenge and suffering is what I want for someone who hurts me, but regardless of what I admit or don’t admit, the feeling is there. Then I take a look at my own heart. A heart which wants to induce revenge on another isn’t exactly deserving of love either. Elyse Fitzpatrick once said “Not one of us is more worthy of God’s love than the other. And if God graded on a curve (which he doesn’t), Jesus ruined that.” It’s an all or nothing type of deal here. Either I’m perfect (which I’m not) or I’m a wretched sinner in need of God’s grace. When I’m mistreated, when I feel unloved, when someone hurts me–I need to realize that my heart is just as full o...

My dad was one of the most incredible men in my life. He was always my biggest supporter, the most incredible source of inspiration and all about giving out life lessons. Dad had, in my opinion, a rough upbringing which led to him running away from home when he was 16 and joining the Merchant Marines. And I am so very grateful for what he went through, because it made him who he was, and being an amazing dad was just a portion of that. For the record, my mom’s pretty damn incredible, too ― but since Father’s Day just happened, I want to pay tribute to my dad and all the important life lessons he taught me over the years (most of which, I didn’t really pay attention to until I was much older). He taught me the meaning of respect, both giving and receiving. He taught me that independence comes with responsibility, and he allowed me to learn that the hard way. He taught me many lessons in responsibility through raising and caring for animals (mainly horses). He taught me to ...