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
- ✨ Thoughtful, cozy book reviews (fiction + nonfiction)
- 📖 Monthly wrap-ups with reading stats + mini reviews
- 💭 Real life reflections from a quiet, overthinking mind
- 🎃 Fall vibes, spooky things, and seasonal joy
- 📚 Library hauls, gratitude posts, and more blog series
📖 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.
📖 Chapter Two: A Blog Evolves
In late 2012, I bought my own domain and stepped away from the Blogger platform. That’s when things got more personal — I still reviewed books, but I also began documenting real life. The wins, the hard stuff, the everyday chaos.
📖 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. 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 the next chapter. So, this is my comeback story — one post, one moment, one day at a time. Read more about my rebuilding journey. →
📖 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.