Coming back from hiatus

I have been asked multiple times, “where have I been?” when it comes to having my website and writing. The honest answer is, after grad school I needed a break. I was hoping that it would be a short break but it turned out to be almost a year and a half…way too long.

What I have been doing is using the knowledge and skills that I have learned over the last 15 years and teaching others. I taught my first college course in spring 2014, Multimedia Reporting. It was perfect, I was able to put my passion for journalism and multimedia into the most amazing class for community college students. It was hard, but I loved it. I taught two more classes this spring, beginning newswriting which I absolutely loved and multimedia reporting.

I got busy and with the passing of my grandma in spring 2014, my passion drained away. When you lose someone it is hard, when you lose someone that is like your second mom in many ways it is much harder and I hit a block. I could not think or process what was happening in life.

With all the changes from death to life my daughter was entering kindergarten. A big change in our life and the feeling that my little girl was growing up right before me. It was a loss of control. A loss of having my “little girl” even though I was excited to see her grow. Missing the little one  was a hard transition for me as a first time parent.

When she entered kindergarten, my world began to spin out of control. My true self, dealing with my grandmother’s death, my daughter moving on to elementary school and just general life stuff became too much to deal with.

I found myself terribly sad, anxious, hurting, angry all while being happy to experience what I could. I felt numb to everything. I lost a lot of weight due to stress in my life. As much as I wanted to enjoy life, it was hard just to manage my day to day activities without worrying about her at school or something.

I am fortunate enough to have amazing people in my life to help me get back on track. I would not say get back to normal because I believe I am far from that but it is getting better. This year I lost my Nana a couple months ago and fell right back into the sadness, anxiety and anger that I had the year prior with my grandma’s passing. Losing two of the most important and influential people in my life really struck a cord and hurt beyond belief.

Death has always been hard to handle, especially for me. I don’t like to think about death. I would rather do anything else than think about death. I am not good with hospitals and illnesses. But I am working on controlling how I feel through lots of different techniques. And for the most part, I am healing one day at a time. Literally. I had to stop thinking about life the next day and the next day. I am just concentrating on today. I have to allow myself to feel what I feel and not bottle it up. Bottling it up has only brought more pain.

My life is writing and storytelling. I need to get back to telling the stories I love to tell through multiple ways and document some of the personal moments I have had as a writer and experiences over this last year. I need to get back to photography, an art I love. Most importantly, I need to get back to my readers and share my experiences and stories.

I have missed you. See you soon…online world.