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 by someone who had been stalking her.  She was such a bright light and her loss was crushing.  I was heartbroken and it took me a long time to regain my footing and stability afterwards.  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 and my mental health went down the toilet at record speed.  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!  Stable(ish) on my meds and ready to get back to blogging, writing for different publications and speaking here and there.  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.  Yes, seeing family was wonderful and Hawaii was beautiful, and seeing my dad in California was great 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! 

I’d like to say ‘I’m back and here to stay!” but anyone of us struggling with a mental health disorder knows better than to say that.  I guess all I can hope for is that I can remain in a better place so that I have more room in my life to devote to the things I love such as writing, educating, and being an advocate.

And with that, I bid you good evening!