This blog is a space for me to document my passion for and journey with personal growth. Here is an explanation of why this blog is called Lo Dawn.
When I was trying to come up with a name for this blog, I thought about light. Personal growth and improvement brings light to my life. It makes dark things lighter and light things brighter.
I was talking to J about this and asking him for name suggestions that had to do with light. I threw out a few and one of them had the word dawn in it. He told me that he thought the name should come from an interesting personal story. I told him that dawn actually has a lot of personal meaning to me. So he suggested Lo Dawn. This name has significance and meaning, but also has a playful and not too serious side. So that's what I decided on.
A funny thing is that when J and I were first married, we would make up songs to sing to our family members on their birthdays. Our "band" was called the Lodown. (Lo for our last name.) So this blog name reminds me of that. :)
But also, after J suggested the name, I looked up the definition of Lo and this is how it is defined: used to draw attention to an interesting or amazing event. I like that. I want to draw attention to dawn. I have had a lot of dawn moments in my life. Moments where I felt dark, confused, alone, afraid, etc. But then something crossed my path (sometimes this took minutes, sometimes years,) and I started to see the light. I am sure that I will continue to have many more of these illuminating experiences throughout my life. I was actually writing a journal entry a few minutes ago and happened to write the phrase "it dawned on me." It's interesting that we use that phrase when we are talking about an enlightening moment and how we were able to see something more clearly. Dawn. What an amazing thing dawn is. What a gift.
Here is a very personal and transformative experience that I had with a figurative dawn...
She Will Find What Is Lost by Brian Kershisnik
Take note of the angel babies. :)
Thursday, May 12, 2016
So some people know this about me, and some people don't. It was something that I was usually not necessarily comfortable broadcasting to everyone because I viewed it as an embarrassing weakness of mine. For several years, I had a lot of fears around driving. I don't think that I've ever loved to drive, but I don't remember being too stressed about it when I was in high school. I did live in a pretty small town and didn't do much freeway driving or anything though. Anyway, then I went to college and didn't have a car so I didn't drive. I did drive during the summer after my freshmen year when I was back home in Missouri, but it was just small town driving again.
When J and I got married, I had access to a car again (which I hadn't had when I was single in college.) The thing is, it was a stick shift car and I didn't know how to drive it. So combine not doing much driving over the past few years (and living in a much bigger city than where I grew up) with a car that I didn't know how to drive, and you get a recipe for fear and stress for this risk-averse girl. J tried to teach me how to drive the car when we were first married. I practiced here and there but the fear inside of me just kept building more and more over time. I did some minor driving, but for the most part, J did pretty much all of the driving.
Then we moved to Iowa. A couple months after our move, I decided to get more serious about practicing. I learned how to drive our stick shift car. I gained more confidence and drove around a lot more than I did when we lived in Utah before our move to Iowa. It was nice to feel like I was making some progress. I still didn't love to drive though. I would do it if I had to, and sometimes (rarely) if I wanted to, but mostly I still just avoided it. J was still the main driver in our family. My confidence level would wax and wane over time. Sometimes it was pretty good. Sometimes, I felt trapped by my fears and they felt paralyzing. I know that to some people, this fear/weakness doesn't sound like that big of a deal. But to me, it was. I hated feeling "broken" and like I should be comfortable doing this, because "hello! I'm an adult! Adults drive! And it isn't any big deal for them." I also felt like it held me back from being able to be a better wife, mom, friend, etc.
Then we moved back to Utah. I continued to drive a little bit here and there but if certain things were involved like the freeway, questionable weather, higher traffic areas, places I hadn't been to before, etc, I would avoid driving at all costs. If I were just staying home by myself everyday and didn't have any kids, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. But having kids often means having a lot of appointments, and needing to buy groceries, and running errands and such. Over the years of this trial of mine, J had always been super patient with me. Of course, it was frustrating for him at times because he had to take time out of his busy schedule sometimes to help me drive the kids to appointments and such, but he rarely complained because he knew how hard it was for me. I often felt really bad though and I didn't like that I was adding extra stress to his load.
Back in early September of last year, I started getting some strong feelings that it was time for us to have another baby...even though that was earlier than our original plan. Over the course of just a couple weeks, I went from feeling like we might think about trying for a baby a few months from then, to having a strong impression that it was time. I was really nervous and we were apprehensive for a few reasons (it didn't make sense financially since we would have to figure out how to save enough money to buy a van, and pay for the birth (which would be quite a bit more expensive than our other kids because our insurance isn't that great. We also had some other reasons to feel apprehensive, one of those being my driving fears and how the stress of another pregnancy and baby (with all of the involved appointments) would affect our family.)
I feel like this baby waited patiently for me to be ready (or at least willing) to get pregnant with him/her. My period returned at 4 months postpartum after E (it didn't come back until 13 ish months with both of the boys, after I had weaned them.) I remember the first thought that I had after my period returned was "oh boy. does this mean that I am going to have another baby sooner this time than our plan?" I put that thought in the back of my mind and didn't think about it much. It would come to the surface every once in a while, but never felt too insistent.
Then as E got a little bit older, whenever I would think about getting pregnant, I just kept thinking "no way. E isn't even sleeping through the night yet. There is no way that I could be pregnant and also still be able to \;handle getting up with E multiple times a night. Then when E was 10 months old, she slept through the night for the first time in her entire life. That exact same night, I had a dream that I had another baby (a boy, by the way. We'll see if there is any truth in that in a month.) I remember waking up the next morning and thinking about how that was a crazy coincidence and maybe it meant something. But again, I put it in the back of my mind. I wasn't ready to start thinking seriously about another baby yet.
Fast forward to about 6 months later when I started feeling a strong push to face my fears and make significant progress with driving (partially so I would be able to handle adding another child to our family (more kids = more appointments and things that require driving) and take some of the load off of J.
Something (a few things actually) clicked inside me. I started facing my fears with more determination than I had been able to muster in the past. I was able to make more progress, more quickly, with driving than I had ever been able to in the past. I started to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and within a matter of days of starting this real progress with facing my fear, I started feeling a strong impression that it was time to get pregnant.
Having this long awaited, and sought after breakthrough in my driving fear helped me to feel a lot more confidence as we faced this decision to have another baby. I knew that I would have to drive myself to a lot of doctors appointments (and our kids'/new baby's appointments as well,) but for once, I didn't feel a huge burden and stress on my mind and heart about this. I felt like it was possible and that I could do this. We still didn't know how everything would work out but we felt like it would all work out somehow... and so far, it has. In fact, things have worked out much better than we could have ever anticipated.
So, over the course of this pregnancy (the past 8 months,) I have been able to make significant progress with driving. It's like a night and day difference. I have felt a huge decrease in my stress level when I drive (or even think about driving.) I can now drive myself (and our kids) places (even on the freeway, or to places that I haven't been to before) with a lot more internal peace. I still wouldn't necessarily say that I love to drive or that I would always choose to be the driver instead of someone else, but I no longer feel paralyzed. I am much more willing and happy to drive myself (and our kids) to things that we have to go to (appointments, groceries, etc.) and I am also willing and happy to drive us to places that we want to go to.
So anyway... back to the painting and why it is significant and meaningful to me. One of the major things that helped me to face this fear head on and make real, lasting progress was that I had been learning more about angels around this time. I learned about asking Heavenly Father to send them to assist me in my daily life. I started praying (especially before and during driving) that angels would attend me and they would literally help me to drive with courage and confidence. I didn't have any profound experiences or anything, but I could feel that angels were truly there helping me. I could tell because I felt a calmness and peacefulness in the driver's seat that I knew wasn't coming from myself. I have often thought that Beyonce (R's womb name) was one of those angels and he/she continues to be.
A few months ago, I saw this painting when someone brought it to Relief Society as part of her lesson. I think that I had probably seen it sometime before, but it didn't hold the same meaning to me then as it does now so this time it really stuck out to me. So when Mother's day rolled around, I gave J a strong hint that this was what I wanted. After opening the painting on Sunday, I noticed that the artist even included a couple of angel babies. That was special to me since I have felt like Beyonce has been one of those angels that has helped me before and throughout this pregnancy.
Here is another excerpt from my journal:
Monday, July 25, 2016
Yesterday was R's blessing day. I think that I have always gotten a little bit emotional during each of our kids' blessings, but this is the first one that I remember having real tears falling down my face. It was a really touching blessing. Especially because some of the things that J mentioned were really close to my heart. J blessed her with the strength of an angel to lift others in need. He also blessed her that her light would break forth as the morning. I've mentioned before why the angel part is significant to me. The light of the morning part is significant because R's name means "Dawn." A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about how fitting that name meaning is for R since I feel like she was one of my angels that was helping me to overcome my driving fears. It's like she was the light at the end of the tunnel of darkness. She was the dawn after a dark night. She was the dawn of a brighter day.
*For more about my driving story and angelic assistance, you can read my talk that I gave in Sacrament Meeting in March 2017.
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