Bright Light Mama

claim your light

I Think I’m a Cozy Minimalist

The Nesting Place - Taking the Cozy Minimalist Self-Study Course

I have always been a nester. I spent a lot of happy time the summer before high school started planning how I would organize and decorate my first, very own locker. The summers before each year of college my mom and I would plan out how I’d decorate my dorm room (think gauzy curtains pinned to the ceiling, a hand-painted mural on a grass mat, and twinkle lights–hey, it was college). There is just something about making my space beautiful that really speaks to my soul.

I’ve just been struggling to figure out how to do that and make it look like grown-ups live here. [Read more…]

My (So Far Very Short) Quest to Become a Morning Person

This is my bed.

How to Wake Up Earlier

It has four sumptuous layers of pillows and a pillow-top mattress. Soft, smooth cotton sheets drown in piles of blankets (as many as four in wintertime: a light blanket, a quilt, a duvet, and a throw). You could probably get lost in it. At the very least, you can absolutely hide from kids in it.

How to Become a Morning Person

My bed is probably in my top three favorite places to be, right between (1) laying in a patch of shade on a bright breezy beach and (3) picnicking in a field of green, green grass. So I’m sure you can imagine how hard it is for me to abandon that cozy nest at all. Much less on purpose, and before I absolutely have to.

But perhaps the only morning better for me than a sleeping-in morning, is one that is insanely productive. I love checking items off my to-do list–especially the important ones that usually fall by the wayside in my day-to-day life. Things like prayer, journaling, scripture study, and exercise. I usually try to get two out of four of those things done every day, but this week I found out that productivity guru Michael Hyatt does all four every single morning. By getting up early.

So I decided to try it.

Here’s how it went… [Read more…]

How to Tackle 80% of Your Stress and Unhappiness

How to Cope With Stress and Unhappiness

When I was about ten, my mom tucked a piece of stationery into the corner of my bedroom mirror. It was a beautiful slip of cream colored paper, laser cut so the edges looked like Art Deco lace. At the top she wrote:

Jamie’s Best Qualities & My Favorite Things About Her

When she first posted it she had only written a couple things, but every once in a while I would come home from school to find something new added to the list and my heart would swell with a warm, golden happiness.

That list is filed away now, but its contents have been a sort compass for me. One I’ve really needed as I shifted my life from single to married to full-time at-home mothering.

One of the things that made my mom’s list was that I was sunshiney and usually in a good mood. And I realized last year that after five years of motherhood, I didn’t really feel like that anymore. I felt productive and needed, exhausted and overworked, full of love and beloved by my little family. But I didn’t feel happy. I didn’t feel sunshiney.

What I didn’t realize was that the sources of a good portion of the monotony and unhappiness of my day-to-day were right within my reach–and I could actually do a lot to change them. [Read more…]

How I Built a Happier Life in Just One Year

How I Built a Happier Life in Just One Year | BrightLightForever.com

Almost a year ago I realized I wasn’t living the life I wanted to be living.

On paper everything was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. I had most of the things I’d been dreaming of since I was a little girl: a sweet, handsome husband, a trio of bubbly little kids, and a white-walled, sunshine-filled house. These dreams were simple but they were mine, and I recognized that I was 100% lucky to have realized them.

But I was also miserable. [Read more…]

Follow on Instagram

Subscribe for Updates