Signs of Growth on the Blog

I have been blogging in this space for almost eight years now. I love staying connected with you – family and friends who have been reading here for as long as I’ve been writing. I love that when we show up at family gatherings that aunts and uncles have something to talk about with my children so that living far away doesn’t matter so much. I love that when we chat on the phone or catch up via email that you know a bit of what is going on in my life and that we can jump into yours. I love hearing your insights and experiences and sharing our growth together.

Those phone conversations and playground chats have inspired my latest, slow growing, project: The Thriving in Motherhood Podcast.  Thriving is about growing and developing well, not having it all figured out.  As I’ve focused on the growth in my own journey I feel empowered, uplifted, and in tune with God.  I’m grateful for the hard things as well as the good.

But staying in that place of growth during the hard, sleep deprived days is no easy feat.  The Thriving in Motherhood Podcast is about us joining together as mothers to recognize and celebrate the growth of our individual motherhood journeys.  With each interview I walk away inspired by the strength of these incredible women and full of ideas for how I can make little changes in my life.  I am so excited to launch soon so we can all continue to learn and grow together.

We have happily paid for the upkeep and services that it takes to run a blog because we value recording and sharing our family story and see the good that it has done for us and others.  The podcast adds it own costs now too and we are realizing that both ventures aren’t cheap (especially on a grad school budget!).  I have started researching how to make the blog and podcast a little more self sustaining while still being 100% true to myself and what this space is.

My first baby step in this area is becoming a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means sites to earn fees by linking http://ajacksonfamily.com to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.  Basically, I’ll be including occasional affiliate links in my posts.  This won’t be a huge change – I was already linking to amazon – so this feels like a natural direction to go towards sustainability.

Thank you for years of friendship and support. I’m excited to continue learning together even more with the Thriving in Motherhood Podcast.  Once the website is assembled (It’s getting closer!) I will officially launch.  You’ll be able to listen online, on itunes, and other podcast directories.  I hope that you will subscribe to it and share with friends so this little community can grow as we recognize and celebrate each other.