Is it over yet? Can we peek out between our fingers and see some sunshine and hope?
I have started and stopped so many blog posts in the last year I’ve lost count. Written on scraps, half notebook pages, started in word documents then abandoned. Because I tell the truth, and I couldn’t share my whole truth, my words faltered. I’m not an influencer or Instagrammer with perfectly currated messages. I’m a writer whose brand is authenticity. I’m not good at fluff. I don’t do well with surface topics lacking grit and heart. So that meant as I obscured part of my life for the sake of privacy, my whole approach to blogging suffered.
That stranger-turned-friend is Mark Dowdle of jochumstrength.com.
I shared that my brother died in March of 2020. But there’s a hell of a lot more STUFF that happened that made it hard to be witty and snarky and fun. In April of last year I had to put my elderly dog down. In August a creative friend died of a heart attack. In September I was rear-ended. In November my childhood neighbor/grandma died. That same month my divorce was finalized. As a cherry on the year, I spent Christmas alone in quarantine because I’d been exposed to Covid (didn’t get it).
Second only to my brother’s death, the divorce was a massive boulder of grief that pinned me down. I wouldn’t wish for divorce for anyone, it’s deeply painful, but it’s where I landed and so I’m moving forward through life as a single woman. In the same way I gained loads more empathy for those who have experiened death grief, I now have so much more empathy for people going through the upheaval that is divorce.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. Walking over hot coals of sorrow. Trying not just to survive, but grow.
The humor will return, but I’m a little uncertain what to do with the blog. I recently told someone that the last 15 months have been an inferno and I’m all pink and thin-skinned. Writing is vulnerability. It takes strength to put words into the world and be impervious to rejection, or worse, indifference.
My writing has also bloomed into something bigger than funny takes on my shortcomings as a horsewoman. I finished a second book. A third short story. So much poetry. A few personal essays. But I’m still growing that thicker skin back that made it easier to share my writing in the past. Probably I need to accept this new thin skin, and the added sensitivity that comes with it.
The last year has changed all of us in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, but I’m still here and I’m cheering for you that you’re still here and fighting for “normal” and trying to get better at whatever it is you want to get better at.
What changed you in the last year?
