50 states of brave introduces: ms. utah!

Today we're proud to announce Ms. Utah...

Jessi, from Haircut and General Attitude!

Ms. Utah is modeling the In The Green Necklace by Favoring Brave.

If you're just joining us, 50 States of Brave is a blogging project that celebrates the little opportunities we have to be brave everyday and the women who make these habits a way of life. As part of the project, everyone blogger is sending in a story of the bravest thing they've ever done for all of us to get to read, which makes us pretty excited. 

The whole project is sponsored by Favoring Brave, my Etsy store. Each lady gets to pick an item from the store to model in her post and keep as a souvenir of her bravery!

Wanna see all of the brave ladies already featured? 

Visit our lovely archives or Pinterest page of bloggers and their Favoring Brave picks!

Wanna join in the fun and represent your state? 

There's more info about that at the bottom of this post.

Alright here's the good stuff:

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 It's hard to think about what the bravest thing you've ever done was. I feel like my life has been pretty blessed. I haven't ever had to be extremely brave (like when you're held at gunpoint or something). My Husband suggested the time I went sky diving but to me that wasn't brave. I'm an adrenaline junkie. I chose to do it the moment I was old enough. To me bravery is making the best of a situation you didn't ask for. One you'd rather not be in. There's the little things I've done like ace a job interview or overcome shyness, or heck, even start a blog and put myself out there for critique. But none of that is really noteworthy. So I decided to talk about my love story.

What's brave about falling in love? Well you could say that even taking that chance and putting your heart out there totally vulnerable to someone else is an act of bravery in itself. But in my case the bravery came in fighting for the life and marriage I knew I wanted without a lot of support. Don't get me wrong, we both have wonderful parent's who are happy with our marriage, but there was a time where we felt alone in our choice.

You see, we were lucky to find each other at a young age. We met our Senior year of High School at a mutual job. We started dating and soon fell hard. We spent every single day together. He was the first one to talk about marriage. I never thought I'd marry young and I hadn't given the idea much thought. But it didn't take long for me to decide it's what I wanted. When you know you've found 'the one' you don't want to wait anymore! I couldn't imagine life without him and I just wanted to start building our lives together.

I just wished we were older. It would have been a lot easier then. I was only 19. My parents told me I was too young. I hadn't dated enough people. I knew I was young, and it's never the way I imagined it would happen, but I knew what I wanted. We got engaged and after that my parents knew it was really happening and gave me their support. But I still felt the social and cultural pressure to be older and have more schooling and experience under my belt. And there were the stares and comments when people saw my ring. They would look shocked and ask my age. "You look to young to be married/engaged." I still get that. People often assume I'm younger than I am. But still, I am young. And I know that. But you know what? I know I did the right thing for me and for us.

 We were married April 10, 2010 on the 2 year anniversary of our relationship. I was a month shy of 20 years old. Now we're coming up on 3 years of marriage and I've never once regretted marrying young. I'm still head over heels for him and I know he is for me. Being with him makes me happy and I thank God I found him so early on in my life. We have so many great adventures ahead of us! I love what the woman who helped us find our wedding rings said "Getting married young just means you get to grow up together." I'm so glad that I had the bravery to stand firm for what I wanted despite pressure to have it go differently. The reward has been more than worth it!



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Think you have what it takes to represent your state? Awesome! Here's what you have to do to apply:

1. Follow Favor the Brave through GFC or Bloglovin.

2. Send me an email at favoringbrave@gmail.com with your name, you blog address, what state you're from (Don't forget this!), and why you should get to represent your state as it's resident brave lady!

3. For a complete description of project requirements or to visit our past honorees gallery please visit the 50 States of Brave Blogger Search page.

Some states are filled already, but there are lots of openings left!

All opinions in this post are the opinions of the blogger featured, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this blog. This is a forum for openness and acceptance, so please be kind. Any derogatory comments will be removed at the discretion of the blog editor.

peace&love,
Jill