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We hear the phrase “fake it 'til you make it” all the time. But what is that really encouraging? What if faking it doesn’t ever lead to “making it?” Is it doing more harm than good? I ask this as someone who struggles with mental health, like so many others. This saying is in no way unique to people living with mental health struggles. But it is starting to feel like I’m constantly trying to “fake it” for 8 hours of the workday, 2+ hours with friends, etc. It's not that my friends make me fake it with them. But there can be pressure to fake it so that you’re not the buzzkill. Is anyone really out there "making it"? We have good days and we have bad days. I used to constantly fake it. The emotions, the struggles, the invasive thoughts all went into their little boxes because if they were living rent-free in my brain I wasn’t really fun to be around. I was the person to always say I’m fine or it’s going well. People don’t actually want to know how you are when they ask “how is everyone doing today”. They want one of the generic “it’s good” types of responses. But what if it’s not good? The response of “I’m hanging in there” or “not great” makes people uncomfortable. It isn’t seen as professional, it brings the room down, people may write you off and not include you after that. What are we supposed to do when the boxes get full? The energy needed to fake it is exhausting. For me, it truly does more harm than good. I am emotionally drained having to hype myself up for 8 hours of the day some days. And it then sucks out the little energy I have so I become a zombie at the end of the day. The next day I muster up what little is left to go for round two of faking it. And the cycle repeats. Sure I try my absolute best to rest and fill my cup back up. But if faking it is draining the cup faster than I can fill it, then what? People preach that emotions aren’t bad, but if you show emotion, then it’s seen as unprofessional because that isn’t the place for it. You get written off. I’m not saying to use everyone in your life as a therapist. But if you seem “meh” and not the energetic person you put so much effort into being, they ask what’s wrong. But they don’t want to really know. The easy answer is probably up the dosage on the meds. But I hear this struggle from so many that don’t have a chemical imbalance requiring meds or people experiencing situational depression. On a good day, I am bubbly and energetic. It’s not fake, but on a bad day, I have to fake it to get to that high level of my normal personality. I don’t think anything less of the people I’m around. Maybe they don’t realize they encourage the "fake it 'til you make it" mentality. It is honestly society’s fault as a whole. I’m sure I’m even guilty of this pressure put on someone else! What is the alternative? Have you seen the trend on TikTok of the videos showing people outwardly happy but behind the scenes breaking? Their message is that if they ever lose this fight to know that they tried their best to win. It sucks! Trying to be emotionally stable is an Olympic sport and I am not a top athlete. Could you imagine physically exerting yourself for 8-10 hours straight every day? That is the same as mentally exerting oneself. We might not be physically pushing our bodies to the limit, but we are mentally pushing our bodies to the limit. Your brain is an organ and not a muscle, fine, but runners have to push their lungs to the limits and so do we with our brain. But we don’t get to stop "running". It isn’t my intention to make people feel bad or guilty by sharing this. But maybe you don’t know. Maybe others don’t feel exactly like I do. But maybe they feel something similar. Maybe you take one tiny little thing away from this that helps in one tiny little way with someone in your life struggling from the pressure to fake it. Maybe one person feels less alone because they know someone else is going through it too. If you made it this far, I want to thank you. If you’re someone also struggling, I want you to know you’re not alone and I hope tomorrow is better than today! Be patient with yourself, nothing blooms all year. Love you like glitter! xoxo, Gabby

Hey Y'all! Do you know your worth? Do you know what worth means? "The level at which someone or something deserves to be valued or rated" - according to Google at least. Who do you think determines your worth, the level at which you deserve to be valued at? YOU determine your worth! How you determine it is a personal choice. Me, I always "knew" my worth set by God, but I didn't feel my worth the way He knew it. So, what changed? I got sick of it. Sure, I forget how much I am worth at times, but I stand my ground more than I ever used to. I don't just mean financial when it comes to salaries and such (although as women we got to start demanding our professional worth be reflected in our salaries). I mean our worth in how we allow people to treat us, love us, and how we hold out for better because we know we are worth it. You must determine what your boundary line is and set that line because you my friend are worth it. No questions about it. Like so many people around me, this past year in the pandemic had me seriously questioning my professional worth. I haven't had great previous experiences with jobs when it came to my worth. In fact, the jobs lessened my perspective of my worth. Beer cans/bottles thrown at my head, threats to physically assault me to teach me a lesson, opinions expressed that it be better if I stopped existing, the lack of support and validation from my supervisors. And this was from the young adult students AND the GROWN adults that advised them. Being let go due to budget cuts really makes one question their worth even more. If we were worth it, wouldn't they have fought to keep us instead of chopping our position? For someone who was questioning their worth it really was that cherry on top. The time away gave me the time to really find my worth and what I wanted. SO MANY people questioned me and shared their unsolicited opinions about my plans and what I should do with MY life. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me "You can't be picky and need to just take what is available" I would probably be able to pay off half my student loan debt! But I knew. I knew what I wanted and knew I would not settle. Why? Because I was worth it and deserved to have my new career chapter be something that doesn't suck my soul and energy. Not just on the job front either. I knew how I deserved to be treated and how I refused to be treated or talked to. For the first time I stood my ground. I called people out when they were speaking to me without the respect I deserved. I called them out when they were speaking about me. I for sure was not standing for any more repeats of when a higher up supervisor was texting about me (in a less than flattering light) to another supervisor but copied me on the group text! I knew what kind of work environment I wanted, I knew how I wanted the job to make me feel and I knew I wanted an amazing team to work with. And guess what? I FOUND it! I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am to start the next chapter in my professional career. I questioned so much the "why" for my "soon to be previous job" I had taken that was supposed to be so different than how it turned out. And now at the end of that journey I see the plan He had in it for me. I needed insurance. He provided a job for it. I couldn't relocate because nothing affordable was available. And thank goodness He put those obstacles in my way (I didn't see it when I was in the middle of it). Had I relocated I wouldn't have found this new job. Having that temporary job showed me I can do something different than my previous field. It gave me the self-confidence to apply for my new job! I knew I was worth it. I knew I deserved to hold off for the RIGHT job that met my needs and I met theirs. My advice? Surround yourself with people who know your worth. I have an outstanding group of longtime friends and relatively new friends that saw my worth before I did. Seeing myself from their eyes started to change the way I saw myself. A football team gets cheerleaders, and they are just throwing a ball and running with it (don't come for me). You are LIVING your life and you too deserve cheerleaders. Go out and get them. My cheerleaders are AMAZING. They pick me up, they keep me up, and they scream GO GABBY when I need the reminder. You need that and you deserve that! I hope you know your worth and if you don't, I hope you start to, because your worth is there. Don't forget, know your worth, then add tax! Love you like glitter! xoxo, Gabby

Hey Y'all! Today I want to talk about the dreaded FEAR we all face. This post originally started out super positive about facing fears and I felt so empowered and strong, then something happened and it put me right back into my place of fear. And that is the ugly truth of fear. We can work to fight and face it, but it will always be there. It's whether or not we choose to face it head on or let it cripple us. I'm not talking about the small everyday fears like spiders and bugs. I'm talking about the fears that prevent/hinder us from living our lives. The fear I struggle with the most can be summed up as Fear of Man. What that basically means is I put the thoughts and opinions of other people about me above God's opinions. That's the biblical way I view the fear, but fear of man can really apply to anyone. I fear what others think of me, disappointing them, not being liked by others, making mistakes and failure. I don't really push myself out of my comfort zone too much any more. I've had the opinions of others really play a role in my decisions to not try at something. And that's not right. It's so easy to say "you do you boo boo" or tell someone to live authentically, but those people still have to face the judgement/opinions of others. This lead to me trying to be "less than" who I am because I knew my "too muchness" is hard to accept. Since I want others to like me I try to not be fully myself. That weighs a lot and adds up over time. If someone says they don't like me, I take it personally no matter how much I try not to. An easy example of this, I was at the airport this past weekend. And I was on a buddy pass after an AMAZING friend offered it to me so I could do something fun when my long awaited plans sadly fell through. Well, I was already a bit on edge because TSA got a little (way more) touchy than the normal slide the back of the hand to make sure I wasn't hiding anything in my shorts I wear under my skirts. Typically they are very quick and easy and we laugh about how the only thing there is my fat rolls. But this lady was THOROUGH. So it was a bit triggering because it was more touchy touchy than I was prepared for (I'm so excited to start EMDR with my therapist to try to help me manage these triggers). The gate desk agent had accused me of being rude and threatened to have my friend's buddy pass privileges revoked. That sent me. Such a small thing that others would have been able to shake off. But my brain let me have it. I felt wrecked that she thought I was rude because I never want someone to feel like I was rude to them (I know, why do I care what she thinks, I'll never see her again) and then the fear that I may have caused problems for my friend because that lady interpreted my anxious question as rude. I put too much care and power into what that lady said and thought of me, and how my friend's opinion of me might change thinking I was misrepresenting her with my supposed bad behavior/rudeness. That normally sits with me for far too long and then feeds my fear for the next time I have to interact with people. I care what people think of me and I know that is not healthy. I know that the only opinion that matters is God's but I forget that in the moment. I'm working on it, but I'm sure not perfect. I also want to share a positive though! I do have those hardships where I get too far into my head but I also have started to be able to tell that fear to back off and keep pushing through. My best friend the other week literally told me f*** fear when I was saying I was afraid to do something. So I now have blue hair and love it! I've always loved my fashion colored hair, but I was listening to those around me about how I'm too old for it, etc. And when my plans for the youth girls retreat I was volunteering at sadly fell through, I joked about spontaneously going to Denver. Well when the opportunity with the buddy pass presented itself, I took it. That is 100% out of character for me. I am a planner and like things structured. But I texted my friend asked if I could crash, packed a bag and headed off! I had been wanting to go for more Denver hikes and I'm so glad I did! Such a small thing, but such a big step for me (mentally and physically). I had the fear of turning this into a business, creating a website and sharing a blog. But I fought through all of that. It's been amazing to have friends support me and make new friends through this endeavor. There is the fear that I'm not as good as other sellers or that I'll fail at new techniques and designs. But through all of those, I keep going. If I can do it, I assure you, you can do it too! Whatever "it" is, face it and work through it. "Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game." - Do you have a favorite quote that helps you conquer fear? Share it below! Love you like glitter! xoxo, Gabby

SHOP ALL COLLECTIONS ABOUT ME Hey Y'all! ​ I'm Gabby and I've always loved glitter. So much so that at a previous job (Sorority/Fraternity Campus Professional) we got charged a $200+ excessive clean up fee for the glitter we left behind! It was worth EVERY PENNY! So I'm thrilled to get to play with glitter and make BEAUTIES y'all get to enjoy that doesn't leave a glittered mess (for y'all at least - my house is a different story). ​ In addition to glitter, my hobbies include reading, gardening, traveling, crafting and teen drama TV. Don't ask me how many times I've seen The Vampire Diaries. ​ Thank you for supporting me to do what I love. What started out as one of my many ADHD new hobbies to help with my mental health has now become a small business! ​ - Gabby REVIEWS I love everything I buy from here and use each thing over and over again. Everything is strongly made, looks amazing and I always recommend Live Boldly Boutique to everyone and anyone. I'm obsessed! - Would recommend! 01/2022 Biff W. Blog Posts Gabby Feb 17 3 min If You Are Faking It, Are You Making It? 30 0 2 likes. Post not marked as liked 2 Gabby Aug 26, 2021 4 min You're Worth It 53 1 2 likes. Post not marked as liked 2 Gabby Aug 4, 2021 4 min Facing Fear 38 0 2 likes. Post not marked as liked 2 Stay Connected CONTACT Name Email Subject Message Submit Thanks for submitting!

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