I’m Laura—a wife, mom of six, Grams, researcher, designer, and crafter. Lauraism is where all those parts of my life get a little room of their own.
I met my husband in California in 1992, when I was sixteen. He was fresh out of boot camp and stationed at Camp Pendleton, and it was practically love at first sight.
The day we met, I told my mother this was the man I was going to marry and have all his children. She thought I was drunk. 🙂
Our first child arrived in 1993, followed by children in 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Six kids later, that prediction turned out to be pretty accurate.
Over the years, I’ve owned and operated an online store back when online shopping was still new, a house painting business, a real estate appraisal business, and a wholesale business. While running those first four businesses, I was also homeschooling my children.
I wasn’t passionate about those businesses, so I gave myself the freedom to stop, start, and try something different. I found my passion around 2018 when I started creating items that allow someone to hold memories very tight. I now run a handcrafted gifts business that brings my love of digital design and crafting into my work.
I spent much of my life searching for my biological paternal family and my full biological brother. That search grew into a love of genealogy and ancestry, and I’ve now spent more than thirty years researching family heritage.
When Ancestry began offering DNA testing, my mother and I were among the early people to test. We also tested with 23andMe to widen our chances of finding connections.
Through that research, I found a cousin who had been placed for adoption as a baby. I also discovered that the man who raised my mother was not her biological father, which led me to her biological paternal family.
Those discoveries are part of why research means so much to me. Sometimes one connection opens a whole new chapter of a family’s story.
My hobbies include research of all kinds, digital design, and crafting. But above everything else, I love spending time with my family.
Give my grandbabies snuggles, spend time with my kids, and the hubs to hang out with, and I’m happy. Those everyday moments mean the most to me.
Medical issues have been part of my life for more than half of it. They affect my days and will be something I discuss often here.
I’ll share my experiences in my own words: what I’ve dealt with, what I’m learning, and what living with those challenges looks like for me.
There are many personal experiences that have shaped who I am. I won’t tell every story all at once, but I’ll gradually share them throughout this blog.
My hope is that someone who has been through something similar—or is dealing with it right now—might find something helpful, or simply feel a little less alone.
The political and religious parts of Lauraism will reflect my personal views. I’ll explain why I hold those opinions and how I arrived at them, including my religious beliefs—or lack there of them.
This site is a place to share my perspective, my interests, and my life, while leaving room to keep learning.
Curious, creative, opinionated, and still learning.