The Real Reason I started A Gathered Life

Motherhood has stretched me, refined me, and, at times, nearly swallowed me whole.

For the past 17 years, I’ve been home — raising kids, homeschooling, cooking, making do, creating beauty where I can. And while I’ve loved so much of it, there’s also been this quiet ache I haven’t always known what to do with.

An ache to be seen, not just needed.
An ache to contribute, not just consume.
An ache to gather what matters and let go of what doesn’t.

But six years ago, life cracked wide open.

Six weeks after my fifth baby was born, my dad unexpectedly passed away.
On top of the already compounding baby blues, I took an extreme nosedive.

Homeschool was nearly impossible to get through.
The house felt like it was sinking deeper by the minute.
Dinner? No thanks.
I gained 50 pounds in less than five months.

I had my gallbladder out two months after Dad died. My daughter had her appendix out two weeks after my surgery. We faced job changes within those same weeks and my dear husband that was already holding us together, started a new company in the middle of it all. I felt like whatever strings were holding me together were being yanked at and pulled with incredible speed to undo me until I didn’t exist anymore. I literally. couldn’t. move. I hit a bottom I didn’t know before.

My body, my mind, my faith, my home — they all spiraled. I felt lost in a fog I couldn’t name, in a season I didn’t know how to navigate. It was dark, and it was lonely.

And that is where the seed for A Gathered Life was planted — in the middle of the unraveling.

Not in the tidy moments.
Not in the Pinterest-perfect corners.
But in the grief, the overwhelm, the survival.

As I sat in the middle of what felt like chaos, something deeper stirred in me — a desire to gather.

To gather hope, when everything felt hopeless.
To gather faith, even as I questioned why it all unraveled.
To gather my home, room by room, inch by inch.
To gather myself, the version of me I thought had disappeared.
And to gather my family, because they were — and still are — all that truly matters.

A Gathered Life was born out of that ache — and also from the small, steady courage that comes when we decide not to wait for life to calm down before we start living it.

I’m not here because I have it all figured out.
I’m here because I don’t — and I know I’m not the only one.

This space is for the mothers in the trenches who want to make home feel like home again.
It’s for the women who are doing their best to raise kids, feed people, stretch budgets, homeschool (or not), build income, and maybe even rediscover the version of themselves they’ve lost somewhere between the laundry and the dishes.

You won’t find perfection here.
But you will find peace.
You’ll find encouragement, practical ideas, and honest glimpses of what it means to gather a life in the middle of the real, raw beauty of motherhood.

I’m so glad you’re here. You belong here.
Let’s gather something beautiful — together.

—
Marilee
Creator of A Gathered Life