As life and family bloggers, we hope to infuse the world with our best knowledge, share our most personal lessons, and touch hearts around the world.  The title of our Blog must MEAN SOMETHING!  We tend to use words like authentic, transparent, intentional, purposeful.  But those words are all soooooo over used!  I was searching for something that wasn’t so common, or quite so obvious.  I wanted a word that sounded catchy and could produce a rhythm off the tongue that was memorable… and yet a word that could convey enough meaning and emotion to cover the landscape of shared life experiences.  (That sounds so fancy! lol)  Anyway, I found myself intrigued by the word “dire“.

“dire [ˈdī(ə)r]:  an adjective.  (of a situation or event) extremely serious or urgent”

Well, there’s nothing about me that would be extremely serious or urgent, but I found that I just kept coming back to this word. It seemed catchy. It had that rhythm I was looking for.  Was there any way I could use it?  Maybe I would check out the synonyms.

“terrible · dreadful · appalling ….”  Ok maybe this wasn’t quite the description I was looking for, but just for fun I found myself testing each synonym to see if somehow it just might describe the direction I was looking for…..

· frightfully (ME)

· distressingly  (ME)

· alarmingly (ME)

I started to feel like I was on to something here!  If I really wanted to talk about honest feelings, be transparent with my struggles, maybe this is a word I could use.  I had struggled with words like authentic, intentional, purposeful.  Those are the pretty words I wanted to use, but did they really demonstrate the transparency I wanted to be able to have with readers?  Somehow those kinds of words made me feel like I had to be more than I am.  They made me feel a little grandiose, and a lot superficial.  Because although those words are what I strive for in life… THE REALITY is often very different!  And thus I found myself laughing and completely resonating with many of the synonyms for “dire”..

· shockingly (ME)

· miserably (ME)

· chronically (ME)

· desperately (ME)

I went further and checked out the antonyms: good- mild- encouraging.  OK, I’d like to be encouraging but it seems very self serving to describe myself or my life as Encouragingly ME!

I would like to avoid the synonyms such as …. ominous · gloomy · sinister · grim · dreadful · dismal.  But I think the true transparency that I want to be able to express requires that I show the reality.  The struggles, the disappointment, the frustrations are all a big part of what drive me to self-reflect.  So, if I’m going to honestly talk about the experiences that have taught me the most in life, I think it’s ok to use the uglier words.  And that’s where I landed.. with Direly Me!