Amy Patterson

Hi, I’m Amy, a systems thinker, wife, mom, and digital retail growth leader. I’m raising a strong-willed girl and three very large dogs. I write about motherhood, marriage, faith, business, and mostly organized (but sometimes feral) chaos.

My Gut Has a Search Warrant

🤔On intuition, evidence, and learning to cross-examine my own assumptions. A question popped up on LinkedIn the other day. You could choose between two jobs. One was an at-will position with annual raises. The other was a five-year contract with no raises but a payout if you

Forty-Two.

🎂On patterns, perspective, & appreciating the view. Today I turn forty-two. When I was younger, I thought getting older meant accumulating answers. I pictured forty-two-year-olds as people who had life mostly figured out. They knew who they were, where they were going, and how they were

The Alien Tree

🌳On discovery calls, three-year-olds, and the danger of making assumptions. Last night, Haisley started talking about aliens. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have made much of an impression. She's three, and three-year-olds say all kinds of things. Most of them disappear as

Raising Dragons

🐉On raising children and other creatures. On Tuesday night, I found myself standing in my kitchen shredding zucchini for a bearded dragon. This was not a sentence I expected to say four days earlier. On Saturday, we were merely considering the possibility of getting a bearded dragon. By Tuesday, there

In the Back of the Sanctuary

💞On ordinary Sundays, faithful people, and the gifts passed between generations. This morning, while most of us were finding our seats and waiting for service to begin, three little girls were dancing in the back of the sanctuary with Ms. Connie. Haisley was one of them. The girls couldn’t

Life Between the Numbers

🍭On LADA, lousy sensors, and spending twenty years solving the wrong equation. Today, my diabetes technology staged a full-scale rebellion. While I was in the middle of a client presentation, my continuous glucose monitor insisted I was headed low. The alarm screamed at me repeatedly. My insulin pump responded

The Dress Still Fits

A few years before I became a mom, I saw another woman online share a tradition she did with her daughter. Every year, she wrapped her little girl in her wedding dress and took a photo. I remember thinking it was beautiful in this quiet, understated way. Not overly curated

Grandpa Milton

🐾On good dogs, grief, and the ones who quietly become home. Some dogs are pets. Some dogs are companions. And then there are dogs that quietly assume responsibility for your family like they were assigned to you long before you ever met. Grandpa is that kind of dog. When Jimmy

Right Before Three

🧜‍♀️On Ice Packs, mermaids, motherhood, and slowing down long enough to notice what’s changing. I had knee surgery this week, and it’s forced me to slow down just enough to realize how much is happening all at once right now. My meniscus repair was supposed to be a

The long game isn’t loud.

♟️On playing chess in a world that rewards checkers. There’s a difference between reacting to what’s directly in front of you and actually understanding what’s happening. Most people move based on what they can immediately see. A comment, a moment, a single data point. They respond quickly

Minnie Mouse, Ducks, Podcasts, and a Whole Lot of Restraint

🦆What I didn’t say, fix, or edit over the past few weeks. There’s a version of me that most people experience, the steady, capable, direct one. The one who can walk into a situation, figure out what actually matters, and start moving things forward without a lot of

The Bumblebee

This morning, my best friend of 30 years went to be with the Lord, and I’m still trying to understand a world where she’s not in it. Even typing that doesn’t feel real. I’m in Baltimore for a work trip, in the middle of a team

It Was Never About the Bracket

🏀On March Madness, work brackets, and the things that quietly make teams work. What started as a simple work bracket has, predictably, turned into something a little bigger. Not in a dramatic way. No big kickoff, no plan behind it. Just a link dropped in Slack, a handful of reactions,

When All You Can Do Is Pray

💬On silence, perspective, and the stories that aren’t mine to tell. If you’ve been following along here for a while, you may have noticed something unusual: It’s been quiet. Normally, I publish something every few days. Sometimes thoughtful, sometimes reflective, sometimes a little ridiculous — but rarely silent.

The Year Between Fathers

🕊️On grief, legacy, and the quiet ways love keeps walking forward. Haisley learned to walk in the hallway of an oncology floor. At the time, it didn’t feel symbolic. It just felt like a small pocket of light in a place that usually holds a lot of heaviness. She

That Time I Turned a PowerPoint Into a Pillow

Part of me hesitated before writing this. Not because it felt extra, but because I didn’t want it to come across as braggy. The more I replayed it in my mind, though, the more I realized it wasn’t about a pillow at all. It was about paying attention

Meanwhile, It’s Not Nothing

🧜‍♀️On building something small inside something full. I launched Meanwhile in January, and since then, 324 people have found their way here. Most of you came from Facebook. A few of you type the URL directly, which still feels strangely intimate. One post crossed 100 views. Several others didn’t.

Lent, Walmart, and the North Carolina Squat.

🩷On Lent, leadership, and the stories we build about strangers. Last night, Jimmy and I were stopped at a red light next to a truck so dramatically lifted in the front and dropped in the back that it looked mechanically confused. I had never even heard of a North Carolina

Meanwhile, in the Walmart parking lot.

✍️On preparation, parking lots, and the chapters we don’t see being written. I hit publish yesterday, writing about Q3 — about my boss resigning, the implosion that rattled our team, and the way I found myself standing in a leadership role I never planned to pursue, only to realize I

I Didn’t Know I Was Ready

🌿On disruption, denial, and stepping into leadership I never planned to pursue. I’ve been keeping a secret since last fall. In Q3, my boss resigned. Not just a senior leader on an org chart, but my boss. Our Global VP of Growth. A mentor. A friend. Someone I grew

Revival in My Backyard

🤍On softening, surrender, and the sound of a church without instruments. Revival is happening 15 to 20 minutes from my house, and Sunday night my two-year-old stood in our bedroom watching the livestream from SEU and kept saying, “I want to go to church. I want to sing

Four Valentine’s Days and a 120-Pound Dog

💖On peace signs, pit bulls, and the sacred speed at which children become themselves. Four Valentine’s Days ago, she was a literal grayscale alien taped to my refrigerator. A black-and-white ultrasound. Peace sign in the air. Two tiny fingers up like she already knew exactly what she

The Worst Advice I Ever Got Early in My Career (and Why I Refuse to Pass It On)

🤪On why real leadership starts when life goes completely off the rails (and why I'll never own a French Bulldog) Early in my career, a managing partner pulled me aside and offered what he clearly believed was hard-earned wisdom. Life, he said, is a triangle: work, friends,

The Meatloaf Incident

🫠A short reflection on help, gratitude, and very questionable food storage. There are moments in marriage that feel less like partnership and more like a very low-stakes true-crime forensics documentary. This is one of those moments. Last night, Jimmy put away the leftovers. Pause here, because this matters.

When the System Is Being Held Together With Vibes, Confidence, and a Google Calendar

🧐Reflections from someone who kept reading the fine print “A system that cannot explain itself eventually asks belief to do the work.” There is a moment when confusion gives way to clarity, and clarity gives way to something heavier. You are no longer missing information; you are noticing misalignment. The