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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Armchair Chats // I’d Love Your Opinion on Some Ch-Ch-Changes!

Apr 24 Leave a Comment

I love writing these Armchair Chats—they are my way of virtually inviting you into my home, pouring you a cup of coffee, settling into the (very real) armchairs in my living room, and talking about what’s going on in our lives and what’s on our hearts. For the past few months, I’ve been toying around with the idea of moving these chats to a monthly email newsletter rather than housing them on the blog. Currently, the lovely people who are signed up to receive emails from me get each post delivered to their inboxes (so, about 2-3 a month). With this change, I’d send out just the one email every month, but I’d include a list of the posts I’ve written this month for your clicking and reading pleasure.

My desire here is to give some added value to my email subscribers, something that’s exclusive to them and that builds our relationship. I’m hoping that if I move to a newsletter format it will allow for more conversation, friend to friend and heart to heart.

Before I make any big changes, I’d love to know what you think about this idea. Could you take this 2-minute survey and let me know if you think this is a brilliant or terrible idea? I really value your feedback! (If the survey doesn’t show up for you below this paragraph, go ahead and click here.) Thank you!

Here’s what I learned, loved, and read in April.

What I Learned

  • All that stress needs to get out. I posted on Instagram stories last week that whenever I have a life change coming up—even a good, exciting one—I always hit panic mode at some point. Not just minor worry, but full on panic: shallow breathing, racing heart, sometimes vomit, and always a desire to change my mind and haul it back to safety. Usually I try to muscle through mentally and emotionally, but this time, I went to Pilates class and walked out feeling like a different person. The more I learn to listen to my body, the more I see that energy is not as intangible as I once thought. It truly does build up in my blood, in my bones, in my spirit, and releasing that energy is necessary and good.
  • Whole 30 is a lot easier the third time around. I’m in the middle of my third round, and it has been a breeze compared to the previous two (both of which were about three years ago). I think it’s because I’ve been doing so much work in my relationship to food in the last few years. I won’t lie: the main reason I’m doing Whole 30 is to lose a few pounds and reset my eating habits. I feel like what I’m learning most this time around is to simply be mindful of my eating choices. In mid-afternoon, I always reach for something crunchy and salty, and now I’m learning to ask, “If I eat this, will it make my body feel the way I want it to feel?” I also have a post coming soon about how Whole 30 helped me minimize decision fatigue.

What I Loved

  • The Festival of Faith and Writing. I wrote all about it here, so I won’t repeat myself.
  • Trader Joe’s Turkish Apricots. See “Whole 30” above. These are saving me in the tough moments.
  • A Brief Guide to the Undernet (episode 192 of The Robcast). My favorite quote from the episode: “There is no correlation whatsoever between number of views and quality of content. . . . Maybe what you do inherently asks for way more commitment of people [as opposed to a viral video clip]. What you do in the world may require of people risk, cost, sacrifice, commitment, discipline, postponed gratification, intention. What you are here to give. . . might not reduce well to the limits and parameters of a cellphone screen.” And all the creatives living in the digital age said, “Amen.”
  • This stage of parenting. I really love toddlerhood, but it has also been a long road of meltdowns, setting limits, creating boundaries, and trying our best to be calm, consistent, and respectful. In these last few weeks, I’ve started to feel like we are really reaping the benefits of all that hard work. I can sense a shift in Selah’s relationship to Dan and me: there is an even deeper trust and sense of security; she is starting to believe that we have her best interests in mind, even when we’re asking her to do something she doesn’t want to do; she knocks us over with hugs and kisses during playtime and even during meltdowns. Yes, there are still emotional explosions and limit testing. Yes, we still have to be hypervigilant about consistency. But experiencing the payoff is helping me stay patient and hopeful in the difficult moments.

What I Read


  • Beartown by Fredrik Backman: I loved one of his previous books, A Man Called Ove, and I heard so much buzz about this one too. I was warned that this one is less whimsical and much darker, but holy cow—it’s dark. Not Gone Girl dark, but still hard to read at times, especially as the mother of a little girl. Basically, this book is about toxic masculinity and what we lose when we train little boys to be powerful, elite athletes. If we teach them to take what they want on the ice, on the field, to grab what they “deserve,” can they turn off that mentality when it comes to people? A haunting exploration of who holds power, who we believe, and the lengths we’ll go to in order to protect our loved ones.
  • How to Fix a Broken Record by Amena Brown: Amena Brown is a powerhouse of voice and emotion—see for yourself in her Women’s Day video. In this collection of essays, she takes us through the lies she’s believed about herself and how she’s learning to break the cycle. Her voice is especially sharp in the second half of the book, and I found myself wanting her to write a whole book on each individual essay. I do wish the book had contained more of her poetry, but overall, I enjoyed learning from her and will read whatever she writes next.

What I Clicked

  • “The Tower Bird probably saw all of it first hand. We also knew it wasn’t really there to make us safer (because we saw firsthand that it didn’t), but to remind us that we were being watched.” The Politics of Safety by Adrienne Garrison
  • “I wish we lived in a nation, in a world, where a man shooting at a lost 14-year-old boy conjured universal revulsion. I wish we lived in a nation, in a world, where we felt universal outrage that two men were led away in handcuffs, their dignity and humanity stripped, for waiting at a Starbucks. We don’t.“ Starbucks Arrests, Teen Shot at for Being Lost Remind Us Some White People Don’t Think Black Lives Matter by Heidi Stevens
  • “Where I see sandwiches made, toys patched, and birthdays celebrated, my children see me weaving wonder into their days. And it’s not because I’ve tricked them or put on a particularly good show; it’s because their vantage point is one of love, trust, and faith in their mother.” Making Magic by Jennifer Batchelor

What I Wrote

  • We Kept Our Baby’s Name a Secret Because We Wanted Something Just for Us // Published on Motherly
  • The Death and Resurrection of Faith: Reflections on Good Friday // Published on the MOPS Blog
  • Armchair Chats // Permission to Revise Redux

I’d love to hear from you! What have you been learning, loving, or reading lately?

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Filed Under: Armchair Chats Tagged With: bloggers, blogging, books, creativity, habits, reading, stress, whole 30, writing

« Why We Kept Selah’s Name a Secret
The #1 Thing I Learned from My 3rd Round of Whole 30 »




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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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