I still can’t believe it’s 2018 already!! I said goodbye to 2017 on a high note. In fact, some might even say that I came to the rescue just like a fab superhero — minus the fashionable, flowing cape, of course! Because, in these troubled times, the world needed someone like me. The world needed someone to come forward in defense of Hallmark movies!

And, rest assured, I was more than happy to answer that call and bring some much-needed calm to all the chaos.

I’m excited to share my latest piece on HelloGiggles, in which I got to talk about one of my guilty pleasures: My love of Hallmark Channel movies and how they’ve helped me get out of my head after this rough year!! After all, these movies get a bad rap, which I think is incredibly sad! I’d been wanting to write this piece for awhile, seeing as how I’ve amassed some 50+ holiday movies on my DVR in the last few months! Have you ever tuned into Hallmark during the holidays?? It’s pure pandemonium. A veritable feast of glad tidings and good cheer. Well, I’m all about spreading said good cheer!

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, in which I demonstrate my vast knowledge of Hallmark movies by rattling off the plots of some of my favorite gems…

In a way, for me at least, these movies are the perfect form of self-care. This year, we all deserve a momentary distraction from the events happening around us.

2017 has been marked by one political storm cloud after another, multiple mass shootings, white supremacist violence, and far too many men behaving very, very badly.

Now, there are those who will roll their eyes and deride these films as being nothing more than one giant fluff fest of cheesetastic proportions — but I feel sorry for those bitter souls. Yes, they are fluff, but that’s the whole point.

If people could embrace the spirit of Hallmark movies, they’d see the redeeming value. The beauty of these movies lies in their simplicity and in their ability to transport us to a happier place. They’re silly, sure, but they take us out of our heads and let us tune out all the noise for a bit.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

I’m not sure if it’s because of my age or just the natural passage of time, but I’ve had one central question rolling around in my head for the last several months: Are we destined to turn into our mothers? And even more specifically…is turning into our mothers really such a bad thing in the end?

So you can pretty much imagine my sheer excitement when I got to write about this very topic for HelloGiggles last week! My essay “Are We Destined to Turn Into Our Mothers?” is my third piece for the site and I’m incredibly happy with the way it turned out. Full disclosure: I didn’t let my mom read it before it was published, but luckily, she enjoyed the finished product, too!

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, and I hope it makes you think about the relationship you have with your own mother…

So why, then, have I felt like I see her every time I look in the mirror? Lately, her words have been coming out of my mouth.

It’s such a natural thing that it’s even shocking at times. I’ll spontaneously start talking out loud when I get frustrated with my computer. I’ll make a point of ordering my burger well done because you can never be too careful with prepared meats.

But I’ve heard stories from friends and have seen enough Lifetime movies to know that, as my grandparents used to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Sometimes, like in my case, it falls from that tree and surprises you by just how hard it smacks you right on the top of your head. That moment when we become a walking, talking mini-me of our mothers — well, it’s not exactly a moment we can plan for, can we? It happens, it takes us by surprise and all we can really do is try to integrate it into the adult we’ve become.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

We’ve talked about recurring dreams a few times on the blog and I’ve been plagued with some dozy dream reruns in my day — some involving hospitals and others involving my father. Pretty heavy stuff, huh? Why can’t I ever dream about gentlemen-ly pool boys over and over? That would be the stuff dreams are made of…

But I digress. I had one dream in particular, though, that started playing itself on a never-ending loop. It was the same scenario, with the same feelings, with the same, “what-the-heck-is-going-on?” vibe even after I’d wake up. And it wasn’t until I actually sat down and wrote about it — all of it — that I finally started putting the crazy puzzle pieces together. I finally saw the whole picture for what it was…

Impostor Syndrome.

Even better? The essay How a Recurring Dream Helped Me Overcome Impostor Syndrome was published on HelloGiggles today! It details the recurring dream I had about finding out that I technically never had enough credits to graduate college — yikes! If I wanted to get my degree, I’d have to go back and finish. ASAP. Looking back now, it’s obvious what the dream was all about, but at the time, everything was just one big ball of confusion.

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, and something tells me I’m not alone in my dream dilemmas…

I hated to admit it, but maybe I was suffering from a case of Impostor Syndrome, that phenomenon that fills our heads with all kinds of anxiety and doubts about our abilities.

The insecurities grow increasingly palpable until we’re questioning our very worth.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t deny that my insecurities were getting the best of me. I felt like a complete fraud as I saw other writers getting published in the same magazines I’d been trying to break into for years; they made it look so easy. What was I doing wrong? Maybe I really didn’t have any idea what I was doing — but the scarier thought? Maybe I didn’t have what it takes to be a writer.

Our minds have a strange way of showing us the light during the darkest hours of the night. It’ll show us things we can’t see in the morning, and, maybe more importantly, it’ll show us those deep fears that we can’t admit — both to other people and to ourselves.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo