Oh, hey there. How's it going?

Hi, I'm Rebecca Woolf. Welcome to Girl's Gone Child. I'm a thirty-five year old mother of four, writer of much, living in Los Angeles with my husband and our four children.  

I launched this website in 2005 when I gave birth to my first child, a son named Archer. I was twenty-three and newly married to a man I barely knew, totally overwhelmed by my new role(s) as mother and wife.

I started Girls Gone Child because I didn't know a single other woman with a child. I didn't have any friends with kids nor did I know any parents. Period. I was in a tiny old apartment with a tiny new baby and an extremely new husband and two dogs and odd jobs and only my mom to call for advice.

And I was scared.

And sad.

And happy.

But also desperate.

And miserable.

And alone.

And so, as a writer, I did what I always did when I felt sad and scared and alone. I wrote about it. To myself. And to anyone who was out there.

I sent out my SOS to the world. And over time, people responded. And I found other writers who were also mothers and who were also lost. 

And alone. 

And happy, yes, but also desperate and miserable and all of the things that many (most?) new moms are. I was home with my new baby during the day, working nights, trying to figure out how to make a living while staying home with my child. (It took me many years of daily writing on this website before I made any real income here.)

And it meant everything to me to find these women. And men, because in those days there seemed to be just as many dads in our little community as moms. And it felt safe. It felt safe to be honest and messy and incorrect. It felt safe to be angry and scared and thrilled -- to post blurry photos of cluttered rooms and drooling babies.

I look back on those early posts and cringe at how little I knew, but also marvel at how willing the community was to build itself up instead of tear down... The Internet was generous and supportive and kind. 

And for so many of us, it was real. It was REAL. So I kept writing. Because THAT was enough. Hell, in those days that was everything. Blogging was an exchange. A conversation. The "Mommy and Me" group for Misfit Toys.

In those early days I wrote mainly of motherhood. About struggles and triumphs and my love for Archer. I wrote about unexpected pregnancy and unexpected marriage and unexpected life… About milestones and early intervention and making mom friends and wishing for a nanny… I wrote about what was happening in my heart and my home and with my family…My life online looked exactly like it looked off. There were no filters. No pinnable images. No twitter or Facebook or social media of any kind. 

Our communities were the links we added to our “blogroll” in the margins of our websites. Our bios were a sentence long and ended in ellipsis.

That was 3,000+ posts ago.

The beginning… 

Over the years, this blog has gone from side project to day job back to side project and while the tone of this site has changed in the 11 years since it first began, I've never stopped writing from my own personal experience about issues that are important to me and the people I love. I AM this blog and this blog is me -- thousands of posts worth, hundreds of thousands of words, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, I now pronounce you woman and blog. 

This is how I parent. This is how I woman. This is how I feel. And fail. And succeed. And think. And question. And learn. And reject and embrace and share.

This is how I LOVE and LIVE.

Over the years, I've contributed to dozens of publications, both offline and on, including HGTV.com, Huff Po, Baby Talk, Parenting and I currently write a weekly column at Mom.me. I'm also the author of Rockabye: From Wild to Child (Seal Press, 2008) and have contributed essays and stories and multiple anthologies including The Moment and Crush and in my formerly teenage life, wrote dozens of stories (and yes, poems) for the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul and Teen Love Series books. 

GGC has been featured in multiple publications including the The New York Times, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, Angeleno and NPR and was once named Blog of the Year by Babble.com. Also a recipient of an Iris Award for best writing, GGC was once a finalist for Bloggies' Lifetime Achievement. People magazine recently named me one of their favorite moms on the Internet which was super duper nice.

If you're new to GGC, welcome. If you've been here from the beginning, thank you. If you have any questions, requests, partnership inquiries or simply want to say hello, please feel free to contact me at rebeccawoolf (at) gmail (dot) com.

I'm also on Facebook and twitter and instagram.

Big love to all...