Meaghan Dawson | The Grit and Grace Project

5 Ways I Learned to Love My Middle-Aged Body

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture, Best Of

The other day, as I was participating in my daily scroll on social media, a Facebook memory popped up on my feed. It was a heartwarming throwback of me and my youngest when she was just a baby. I looked tired, yes, but also had that new-mom glow as I held my daughter in her “Baby’s First Christmas” outfit. She was three months old and this was, sadly, quite a few years ago. I remember that picture well. We were at my in-laws’ house after church, and it was the first time I had gotten “dressed up” since giving birth. And I remember being wildly insecure about my new, mom-of-three body. I felt frumpy, overweight, and gross. I didn’t want to go, […]

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When Hope is Your Bravest Choice

By Meaghan Dawson / Faith

Hope. It’s a four-letter word. It’s dangerous. Daring. Subversive. Hope can seem foolish, naive, and blind. With all of the hurting in the world, what is there possibly to hope for? It can seem defiant, hoping even when things are dark and the world seems broken. But hope, on a more personal level, can be very hard. How do you hope when you receive the diagnosis no one wants to hear? Or when your marriage is in tatters and your heart is only holding on by a thread? Is hope possible when your child is in the depths of addiction and you expect the worst with every phone call? Is hope even alive when depression hits and the simple act of getting

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The Best Moments of My Life Don’t Belong on Instagram

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture

Sometimes I feel like this is Instagram’s world, and I’m just living in it. Don’t you? I mean, I can fight hard against it and lecture my kids on the dangers of social media all day long. Yet, still, I find myself on the lookout for the best moments. You know the ones… Where the lighting is just right and everyone is smiling just so. Where my skin is blissfully clear of pimples and wrinkles and my hair has just the right amount of bounce. These moments have me on high alert, poised and ready to capture them, filter them, hashtag them, and then post them so I can preserve these memories of my #bestlifeever for all to see. Because that’s what

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5 Ways I Learned to Love My Middle-Aged Body

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture

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Leaning-into-Worship-Even-When-You-Have-a-Hurting-Heart

Leaning Into Worship With a Wounded Heart

By Meaghan Dawson / Faith

Normally, I am a girl who loves her worship. Set me up in the front row at church with the lights going and the praise pumping, and I will be hands up, tears rolling, scream-singing the words (because I know them all). I’ve lived enough life to truly understand the cost of His grace, the depth of my sin, and the beauty of His love, so worship could last for hours, and I would not complain. But as I sat in Bible study listening to two beautiful girls leading that day, my heart was in rebellion, willing me to resist. I was agitated. Annoyed. I didn’t want to worship. I wasn’t feeling the moment or the praise. Worship was not on my

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4 Inspiring Women You Need to Follow on Instagram Right Now

By Meaghan Dawson / Purpose

We all do it. We all get lost in the scroll from time to time. Zoning out to an Instagram world filled with loveliness is a welcome relief from the push and pull of life. It’s easy to get swept away by the carefully crafted world of both social media influencers and mere mortal posters alike. And why shouldn’t we? Instagram is one of our favorite social media platforms for good reasons. It’s visual, driven by beautiful images that can uplift and inspire even our darkest days. It’s easy, allowing us to cultivate our experiences and manage our content with less sponsored posts and unwanted rhetoric than other social media platforms. And it’s fun too. On Instagram you can interact with celebrities,

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A Simple Phrase That Will Encourage Every Mom

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

It’s been happening for about a month now, this 3 a.m. visit. It starts with a creeping tip-toe, then a gentle tap on my shoulder. Sometimes there are tears, sometimes there aren’t. But it always ends the same, really, with an elbow in my ribs and a foot jammed into my husband’s back. Always. We’re really not sure why they started, these visits. If you ask my daughter during the daytime, when she’s wide awake and lucid, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s a mystery even to her. But for whatever reason, every night for the past few weeks, she’s visited our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, scared and needing comfort. So, of course, we open up

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What Does It Mean to Be a Virtuous Woman

4 Surprising Things That Make a Virtuous Woman

By Meaghan Dawson / Faith

Working on the back end of Grit and Grace Life has lots of perks. I get to work with Darlene, who if you don’t know by now, is a fount of knowledge, wisdom, and encouragement. I get to pray with and work alongside an amazing team of women. I get to share a message I am passionate about. And, in maybe the most surprising perk of all, I get to see what you, our readers, want to read about. You want to read lots of things. It seems like you’re searching for the things that make our hearts ache. You’re searching for hope. You’re searching for peace. You’re searching for something that makes you feel less alone, for someone to write something

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My Jersey Mom on Life And How to Throw a Punch

My Jersey Mom on How to Throw a Punch (in the Battles of Life)

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture

My mom is a small woman. She’s always been. It’s not so much that she’s short—she’s actually taller than me—but more that she’s always been thin and slight, her bones seemingly the same as a bird’s. But what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in personality. See, my mom is from Jersey. Technically, we all know it’s New Jersey, right? But the truth is, there is a certain cachet to New Jersey that fits only when you say “Jersey.” It’s more fitting to the person, to the aura, than the formal version. And my mom is very Jersey. She’s tough. She’s got a fighter’s spirit. In some ways, it was difficult as a kid. My mom was quick to anger,

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An Adventure in First Time Homeschooling (We Miss You Teachers)

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture

6:00AM: My house is silent. By some stroke of #Coronamiracle I’m up first, trying to settle myself as we step into our new normal. Time for coffee. Bible. And a self pep talk. I’ve got this. HOMESCHOOL, here I come. 7:00AM: Online Yoga. For peace. And strength. And sanity. And, yes, another pep talk. 7:45Am: Coffee (you’re going to start to see a trend here, wait for it…) 8:00AM: Class begins. Middle Child: The studious one, jumps in feet first. The lessons their amazing teachers spent hours over their spring break preparing are beautiful and clear and concise. He’s a self-starter and he’s off to the races. Godspeed, little buddy. You’re on your own. Youngest Child: Still in PJs. Hair’s a rat’s

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How I Made Beauty From Ashes and Burnt Toast

By Meaghan Dawson / HerStory, Purpose

I have been many things in my 40 years. I’ve tried on many different hats. I have been a fashion-forward retail worker in New York City and an avid runner who defined herself by her race times and lap splits. I have been a stay at home mom, priding myself on my perfect children, successful husband, and well-crafted athleisure attire. I was a homemaker, a make-it-from scratch smug cook who relished in making my own baby food and feeding my family straight from the farmers market. And this was long before being “organic” was a thing. I was constantly searching for something, an identity, my sense of self. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a function of low self-esteem.

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3 Ways You Can Save Money on a Prom Dress

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

My senior prom dress was a floor-length, beaded, navy blue nightmare. Yes, you read that right. It was a nightmare for a lot of reasons. First of all, it was sexy. Which, I guess for some, is not a nightmare but looking back I see it now for what it was—way too sexy for a high school senior. A floor-length, navy blue, beaded number (we’ll get to those dreaded beads in a second); it was something you’d see on a Miss America contestant. It was tight; I’m talking skin-tight—so much so that it was hard to breathe and impossible to enjoy the only mildly appetizing prom food. The slit up to my mid-thigh was definitely not age-appropriate. Second, the beads…oh, the beads!

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Mom, You Know When Your Kid Needs a Win

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

The folder is bright orange; bright like a hunting vest or a parking cone—neon, really, if I had to describe it. It’s giant too; a spiral-bound notebook of the largest available size, stuffed full of papers and notes, well-loved and often used, the binding on the back starting to come unhinged. It’s really quite hard for me to believe, knowing this, that he missed it sitting in his homework bin. But he did. My sixth-grade son packed his backpack, walked out the door, and went to school without this very important, very bright orange folder. If I’m honest, my first reaction is not one I’m proud of; my first reaction was one of annoyance. This child, who has my whole heart and

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Why Every Mom Needs to Have a Meltdown

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

At its best, airline travel is simply a series of minor inconveniences. The waiting. The lines. The undressing. The re-dressing. The small doses of both radiation and humiliation. It’s just not really fun, right? But then you add in a family and a bunch of small little humans and those minor inconveniences morph into major ones quite quickly. What seems like a virtual breeze when you’re flying solo quickly becomes a nearly insurmountable hurdle, and everything is about 20 times harder. Especially when things don’t go exactly as planned. Which happens more often than not when you’re flying the friendly skies. And while my children are inching up in years and things are becoming marginally easier, we still encounter little travel hiccups.

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What My Beautiful, Imperfect Baby Boy Taught Me About Perfection

By Meaghan Dawson / Faith

Almost 11 years ago, I was happily pregnant with my second child. Blissfully dreaming about a healthy baby, my biggest fear was managing two babies under two years old. I was completely ignorant of all that could go wrong. After all, I was healthy. I ate well. I took my vitamins. I didn’t drink or do drugs. I did everything that is required of a pregnant woman. I was owed a healthy, perfect baby. Issues happened to other people. Not us. But, as often happens in life, God had other plans. And those plans came in the form of a child born less than perfect. Problems came in the form of a child who would face challenges I never imagined, with something

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Welcome to Holland. A Message Every Mom Needs

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

Some people walk into parenthood with a very specific set of ideas on what it will look like. They have lots of plans. You know the ones, right? “Oh, my child will never act that way in public.” And, “Oh I will never feed my child that.” Those people are delightful, no? Me, I was definitely not one of those people. In fact, if there were a spectrum of pre-parental awareness (think 10—knows everything and 0—knows nothing), I would have been a -20. I was 100% clueless as to what parenting would entail, how I would handle it, and what exactly it would look like. As it turns out, this was both a blessing and a curse for my parenting career. When I was pregnant

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What Avengers: EndGame Taught Me About Female Friendship

By Meaghan Dawson / Life & Culture

I try to be the “cool mom” in a lot of different ways. It’s not that I don’t discipline my kids or try to be their best friend. Nor is it that I’m up on the hip lingo and the latest YouTube overnight sensation. But I do, in my own way, try to be cool and know what is going on in their world. I know now to be quiet and not engage in overly embarrassing mom conversations during middle school carpool. I have stopped wearing my pajamas to drop off and have learned that blowing kisses to my fourth grader is frowned upon. I steer clear of mom jeans and try to, at least up to a point, keep up with

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