I find myself in the position of having to apologize, yet again, for the long absence in my writing.  Truth be told, I’ve actually written a number of posts over the months but deleted them all within a day.  It has been a challenging 8 months but I think that things have finally turned a corner for me. 

Back in December, I found out one of my best friends was murdered.  She was such a bright light and losing her was crushing.  I was heartbroken and it took me a long time to regain my footing and stability afterwards.  Even now, I have a very hard time speaking about it.  On top of that I was working full-time at a very demanding job and I found that I was unable to be there for my 4 kids and work at that pace at the same time.  My family suffered badly and my mental health went down the toilet.  After talking with my husband and crunching the numbers, I finally gathered the courage to quit my full-time position and ask if I could scale back to 2 days a week.  Thankfully, they said yes and it has been a tremendous weight off my shoulders.

So now here I am!  In the past month we took a vacation to visit family in both California and Hawaii, got a puppy (Frosty), and the boys started school.  The vacation was a nightmare to put it bluntly.  We went to Disneyland (aka Utter Hell), and then flew to Hawaii where we had to pay a small fortune for a rental car and split time between staying with family and two different hotels, which meant unpacking and packing our stuff up constantly.  I know this must seem like whining but when traveling with 4 young children, EVERYTHING is a massive effort.  However, seeing family was wonderful, we went crabbing, attended a beautiful wedding and Hawaii was as beautiful as ever. In California, seeing my dad was as wonderful as always but overall, the trip was too much for me.  To make things harder, we got back home from Hawaii at 12:30am and then had to drive 2.5 hours so that we could pick up our puppy early the next morning.  I didn’t sleep more than one hour for 3 or 4 nights in a row and I was NOT in a good state.  When we finally did get home with Frosty, it took me almost two weeks to recover. 

But allow me to show you these lovely pictures with smiling faces so as to create the illusion that everything was enjoyable and effortless!

Overall, I am in a MUCH better place now and I’d like to say ‘I’m back and here to stay!” but anyone struggling with mental illness knows better than to say that.  I guess all I can hope for is that I continue to have more room in my life to devote to the things I love such as my family, writing, and whatever else life brings!

And with that, I bid you good evening!