In January of 2025, I bought a domain name.

It sounds simple. It wasn’t.

I had been circling this dream for years — decades, really. I was an English major with concentrations in professional and creative writing and an art minor. I spent a summer in New York City interning for a magazine and thought I had stepped directly off the set of Sex and the City. I was going to write. I was going to edit. I was going to share things that mattered.

Then life happened — beautifully, chaotically, completely.

I fell in love. I got married. And then, in what felt like the span of a long weekend, I had four children aged five and under.

The writing didn’t stop entirely. It just changed shape.

In the evenings I would sit in the dark in the kids’ rooms after stories and snuggles, waiting for small people to fall asleep, and I would jot down the memories of the day so they wouldn’t disappear by morning. The funny things they said. The small moments that felt enormous. The ordinary details that I knew, even then, I would want to remember forever. Eventually I printed those entries into a hardback book. It sits on my shelf now and is one of the most cherished things I own.

But life kept moving and kids stopped needing mom to sit with them in the dark. The blog entries became quick notes on my iPhone. And then even those got harder to keep up with.

I tried again in 2018 — carved out a morning hour or two when all the kids were finally in school and let myself dream a little. Then my father-in-law passed unexpectedly in January 2019 and with my husband as estate executor, there was more work than hours in the day. I pushed the dream aside again. I let life crowd it out again.

I had gotten good at that.

By 2025 things looked different.

My boys were away at college. My older daughter was about to graduate and join them. My youngest — largely self sufficient and about to start driving — needed me in the smaller, steady ways that high schoolers do: present but not hovering. My husband had about ten years before retirement. And I found myself with something I hadn’t had in a very long time.

Pockets of time.

I love alliteration. I always have. So I spent a few weeks turning names over in my mind, holding them up to the light, seeing how they felt. I wanted something that felt rich without being pretentious. Simple without being plain. Something with a little warmth and a little shine.

I love a polished penny’s rose gold sheen. It feels rich yet simple at the same time.

So I settled on the name. I sat down at my computer, took a deep breath and bought the domain.

A Polished Penny was born in January 2025.

Around the same time, my youngest daughter and I attempted our first sourdough starter. We named her Penny. She failed spectacularly. We eventually tried again and if you want to know how that story ends — well, you can read it here.

The universe, it seemed, was paying attention.

In May of 2025, the government announced that the penny would be retired.

I had already named my blog. I had already bought the domain. I had already started dreaming out loud.

And when I heard the news, I felt something I couldn’t quite name.

I thought about my older daughter heading off to college. About the quiet that was settling into our house room by room. About the question I had been turning over for years without quite letting myself ask it out loud: was I about to be pulled out of circulation too? 

A woman in her mid forties who still didn’t know what she would be when she grew up. A stay at home mom whose job description was slowly, tenderly, inevitably changing. A writer who had spent twenty years sitting in dark bedrooms instead of at a desk — and who wasn’t entirely sure the world still had a place for her.

Was I a relic? Was I obsolete? Had I missed my moment somewhere between the diapers and the college drop offs?

And then I thought: what will happen to all those pennies?

They don’t just disappear. They don’t stop being beautiful. Some are shiny and new. Some are a little more worn, carrying the particular patina that only comes from years of being handled, passed along, held onto. Each one aged in its own way. Each one still worth something.

They find new ways to carry on.

Copper penny floor inlays. Resin penny tabletops. Penny crafts and penny art and penny collections tucked into the corners of homes that find them beautiful enough to keep.

A polished penny doesn’t stop being valuable because the world moves on without it. It just finds a new and beautiful way to matter.

I was an English major who interned at a New York City magazine at twenty and thought she was Carrie Bradshaw.

I was a mom who sat in the dark for years making sure the small things didn’t disappear by morning.

I was a woman who let life crowd her dream — not once, not twice, but enough times to wonder if the dream had an expiration date.

But it doesn’t.

A Polished Penny isn’t just a blog name. It’s a decision to be something worth keeping. A belief that the second chapter doesn’t have to be sadder or smaller or less than what came before.

It can be rosegold. It can shine.

I unknowingly named my blog after something the world was about to throw away. 

Maybe I’ll make a penny table.  Maybe you can too.  

Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.