Posted in inspiration, life, life experience, Self Improvement

Revisiting and Staying A While

Wow it’s been 4 years since I have written a blog in here. So much has happened in the world. I feel like life paused in a sense yet kept moving. I don’t really even know how to explain that, but given we all experienced the pandemic, I think most people will understand what I mean.

I have been feeling out of sorts lately, as though I am not living my purpose. I started to do this years ago and, in a sense, I feel like putting my thoughts into words helped me and so many people sharing the same experiences as me. I stopped for a while because I was afraid to be vulnerable around people. Especially people that actually know me in real life. Even people that contributed to the pain I speak of. However, I realize that being raw is necessary. It doesn’t matter who reads it or what people say, there are people that need my experiences to help them cope and get through their own. In no way am I a professional at this. I just had to figure out how to rise above my emotions and troubles. I can’t even lie and say I did it gracefully. There were times that I was a hot mess. I may have handled things immaturely and it hindsight, even those reactions are a lesson.

With this blog I want to take it back to the beginning. Though the emotions aren’t as raw as if I was writing the story as it happened, the memory is still vivid in my mind. I want to detail life from the beginning of divorce to now, as my children recently graduated high school. Life as I know it is changing and those feelings of emptiness creep in my heart at times. Empty nesting is real and I want to be here helping us all get through it together.

I hope whoever stumbles on this blog leaves feeling better than when you found it.

Posted in inspiration, life, life experience, Loss, Self Improvement

2018 Broke Me

Ever live such a terrible year that when you look back on it you realize you just floated by. You can only recollect parts of the year, the really really hard parts, but the in between of how you lived is a blur? That was my 2018. I lost 11 people in 2018. The first of which being my beloved Daddy. My best friend. The man I turned to for everything. The man I spoke to EVERYDAY. I will never forget the weekend before the Monday he passed. I watched his breathing change. I laid next to him, held his hand and silently cried on his shoulder. I wasn’t ready to let go. Then he took his last breath, tears streamed out of my eyes. I remember leaving the house to run an errand and trying to figure out how life was going on. How was the sun still shining? How were people still smiling? I wished it was all a bad dream. I remember waking up every day for months forgetting he was gone and reliving that pain over and over again. I’d get up to get dressed for work and just stare into my closet. I wished I didn’t have to do anything but sleep and cry in bed all day. But I couldn’t. I had to pay the bills, I had to be a mom, I had to be there for my mom. It was this new life without one of the most important people to live it with anymore and to be honest, many days I didn’t know how I could go on. My entire family was distraught, including my children who were experiencing loss for the first time. No one could console each other as deeply as we needed because we were all in pain. A few weeks later my dad’s brother passed, a few other family members after that. Just when I thought I was starting to cope and my children’s lives were starting to show some normalcy their Dad’s father passed away suddenly to a massive heart attack. A man that was so strong, so kind, so funny. A man who took care of himself. The rock of his family. Our lives suddenly spun out of control again. My kids wore the same clothes they wore to my dads funeral to their other grandfathers funeral because the two dates were so close that they hadn’t even had time to grow out of them. One week later,my dads sister, one of my favorite aunts, lost her battle to cancer. I’m not even going to keep listing the losses because it’s almost crazy to fathom that one family can endure so much pain in 365 days. My only point of writing this is that I can understand how easy it is to live life on autopilot. Truth is, it’s ok. You just can’t stay there. At some point you need to find a way to see the light. You have to live. You have to love. You have to find some way to move on eventually. 2018, you broke me. However, I’m putting myself back together in 2019.