“You can use your grief, the bad things that have happened to you, as fuel to find your life’s purpose. You can use your pain as a drive to create an amazing life and become the person you were meant to be.”
Hi, I'm Amanda.
AKA, "Mommy Adventurer," my alter ego that was born the day my hubby of seventeen years, Captain Neal Taylor, passed away in 2012. Before that, I was a kinda regular mom who juggled four daughters, carpool drop-offs, her husband's deployments, and all of the things with varying levels of success. I was afraid to fly in airplanes, even though I was married to a pilot, and the thought of traveling anywhere solo with the kids (like Myrtle Beach!) freaked me out.
It didn't happen in an instant, but it happened: I changed.
I realized that if we were going to have the life we envisioned, I was going to have to step up. I started a list of things that scared the crap out of me, everything from sleeping alone in our bedroom for the first time to climbing a mountain, and called it "The Brave List." That is how everything began. I now realize this was the method I somehow intuitively chose to process my grief, but looking back, I had no clue what I was doing. It simply felt better and more powerful to look at myself and my daughters as the heroes of our story instead of the victims.
Doing brave stuff that scares you is the quickest way I know of reseting your what's possible button.
We are six years out in our grief journey, and the five of us have traveled the world together (and added some new family members along the way). We've lived and loved hard, made a million memories, and almost as many mistakes. What I've realized is that what really matters is the heart connection of two souls, a family, and a community. What matters is the audacity to show up for your life, for the mountaintop experiences like jumping out of airplanes, but more importantly, for brave voyages of the heart.
My intention for this blog is to share our life and adventures, both in extraordinary and everyday things, and to encourage those who are grieving, bored, looking to feel something more, be inspired, give back, or be part of a community of humans that want to live their biggest and best life now.
Maybe you have not stumbled upon this blog by chance.
Maybe you were meant to read these words, and you have your own what's possible button that needs to be reset. If this resonates with you, I hope you stay and become part of our journey. I hope you show up today, this very moment, and claim your place as the hero of your own story and jump with wild abandon into whatever magnificent story line life has in store for you. Because I want to know a person like that. I want to know a whole tribe of people like that.
Live differently because time is short,
Amanda
Most Recent Blog Posts
Featured Blog Posts
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life”
Because here is the thing: Doing brave shit that scares you is the best way to reset your what’s possible button.