Welcome!

Hello blogging world! My name is Kristin Schouten.  My dear friend Amberly Lambertsen (you can view her blog here: Life with Amberly and Joe) has been talking to me for a few weeks about her blog and what she has been writing and how much she has enjoyed it.  It got me thinking that I would love somewhere to share my frustrations, joys, interests, and thoughts, not only for myself, but also for the other people out there who might be going through the same things I am and can help me or others as well.

I was recently introduced to a program called Studio 5 that airs every day on KSL, a local news station here in Utah.  The wonderful person who introduced me to this show was my mom, and ever since I have absolutely loved watching it!  One of the segments on this show this month is called 'Live Without Pretending', one of the topics in the segment is 'Am I Fake?' This is the topic that got me hooked on the show.

All of us are fake in some way or another whether we mean to be or not.  Some of us wish that we weren't so fake, and others may not even realize that we are fake in the first place.  I'll be the first to admit that I am 100% guilty of this.  I have pretended to laugh at something when it wasn't funny, pretended to be someone's friend and then talked about them behind their back.  'Am I Fake?' has been a real eye opener and encouraged me to change the way I act toward other people.  I have been striving to not act fake in my every day communications and actions with other people.

It has also made me start to think about how I can be a better person in my life.  How can I strive to be all that I can be?  How can I be myself when I may not know who that really is?  And that's what brought me here, to my blog, 'Be You. Love You.'  I hope to post topics on here where we can talk, grow, and learn together about being ourselves and not worry so much about what other people think.

So I welcome all of you to my blog where I hope we can all feel comfortable talking about how to be true to ourselves and love who we are at the same time.