Prologue: Welcome to the Blog
Currently somewhere between fiction and real life.
📚 Meet the Characters
- Steph: Overstimulated bookworm, spooky season enthusiast, professional overthinker, and Diet Coke loyalist. Always reading, rarely peopling.
- Caleb: Sensitive soul, deep thinker, smarter than he has any right to be, and a tech lover through and through. Read Caleb’s birth story →
- Holden: Wild child and comedian. All boy, all the time — rough and tumble, loud and lovable. Read Holden’s birth story →
© Steph (1989), Caleb (2015), and Holden (2018)
🗺️ Setting: Rochester, NY
Where the weather can’t decide, the garbage plates are famous, and Wegmans is basically a religion. It’s chaotic, cozy, and colder than it has any right to be — but it’s home.
💌 Dedication
Anyone who's ever felt too quiet or too loud for the world. The overthinkers, the bookworms, the ones still figuring it all out. This blog is for you — the beautifully messy, deeply feeling, always-growing humans who find comfort in stories (real or fictional) and crave meaning in the mundane.
📖 Table of Contents: What You’ll Find On the Blog
- ✍️ Storytelling + One Minute Memoirs — small stories with big feelings, turning the everyday into narrative
- 📚 Books + Reading Life — reviews, reading recaps, monthly stats, and library hauls
- 👩👦 Motherhood — honest stories from raising two boys
- 📝 Personal Essays — reflections on life, identity, and meaning in the everyday
- 📖 New Chapters — essays on divorce, rebuilding, and rewriting life from the ground up
- 🌿 Mental Health + Introversion — navigating anxiety, quiet living, and self-discovery
- 💵 Money + Finances — budgets, spending, saving, and the ongoing work of tackling debt
- 🏃♀️Health + Running — running milestones, fitness goals, and the ups and downs of weight and wellness
- 🍂 Seasonal Joy + Everyday Moments — cozy vibes, little celebrations, and the magic in the mundane
- ✨ Daily Life — snippets of chaos, laughter, and the ordinary moments that make up real life
- 🔁 Series — monthly recaps, goals, and other ongoing features
📖 Introduction
Books have always been my anchor — the thread that ties it all together. They've shaped my worldview, quieted my chaos, and offered comfort on even the hardest days. This blog started with books, and even as it’s grown into something more personal, they remain the heartbeat of it all.
I’ve lived a thousand lives through stories… and written my own life one messy, meaningful page at a time.
📖 Chapter One: Where It All Began
I started this blog back in 2009 as a college student studying English Lit. For many years, it was known as Steph the Bookworm. It began purely as a book review blog — a place to share what I was reading. Books gave me a voice when I wasn't sure of my own yet, and blogging became a way to join the conversation.
📖 Chapter Two: A Blog (and Life) Evolves
In late 2012, I bought my own domain and stepped away from the Blogger platform. That’s when things got more personal here — I still reviewed books, but I also began documenting real life. The wins, the hard stuff, the everyday chaos.
This chapter of my life was all about transition and early adulthood — my first house, grad school, marriage, and the start of my career. I also took up running, focused on my health, and lost a significant amount of weight. It was a period of growing up, of trying on different versions of myself, and the blog became the place where I worked through it all in real time.
📖 Chapter Three: Motherhood & Mayhem
In 2015 and 2018, I became a mom. My blog became a space to process life with littles — the beauty and the burnout. This was the season of birth stories, sleepless nights, and documenting both the exhaustion and the wonder of raising little humans.
But by 2023, my life flipped upside down, and blogging fell away.
📖 Chapter Four: Rock Bottom & the Rewrite
📖 Chapter Five: Finding My Way Back
It’s 2025 and I’m rebuilding — my life, my voice, and my blog. I missed writing. I missed this space. With my old domain gone, I returned to Blogger and started salvaging what old posts I could from the Internet Archives. I also changed my blog name to Stories by Stephanie because I'd outgrown the old version of myself. I needed a name that fit my next chapter. So, this is my comeback story — one post, one moment, one day at a time. Read more about my rebuilding journey. →
📖 Chapter Six: Between the Lines
Outside of blogging, my story is still unfolding. I’m raising two boys who are growing up faster than I can catch my breath. I’m navigating single motherhood, finances, and mental health while learning to build a quieter, simpler life that still feels full. This space isn’t just about what I’m reading or writing — it’s about living in the middle of it all, and telling the truth about it.
📖 Epilogue: The Story's Not Over
There’s no neat bow to tie this all up yet. I’m still writing — both my blog and my life. Follow along in my New Chapters series — where I'm rewriting everything, one page at a time.
📌 Chapters I’ve Bookmarked
Some of my favorite posts — the ones that feel closest to my heart. Honest, messy, reflective, or just plain fun.
- The Books That Built Me →
- One Kick Per Season (One Minute Memoir) →
- Before I Knew You →
- Baby Clothes →
- I Loved You Then →