I lost interest in writing because I lost myself in grief.

In January I moved across the Country with my husband and kids to our very first apartment together. We spent 6 years prior living with his family and were buried deeply in work with our family run business. I had met my husband the semester I was finishing up College, while raising my 7 year old as a single young mother. Within the next several years I would end up cracking my trauma and mental health diagnosis wide open. But nothing has left me feeling so RAW as finally feeling SAFE inside of our own home.

I have MOLTED from my former shell. I am not who I was when I lived in NY. I am no longer the person I thought I was, nor do I wish to return to being "her".

After years living paycheck to paycheck as an entrepreneur, having two more kids and diving into coparenting, and falling head first into therapy and trauma healing.... I very much thought moving to our new home would give me this MAGICAL EXPERIENCE of thriving in 2022.

What I have discovered in the last 4 months has instead made me feel like I am curled up in the fetal position with my skin all raw and sun burnt. It hurts to get up... but not in a depression sort of way. Not in the ways I have felt like I was hurting in the past when something I was going through was hard. Seemingly hard because of anxiety, depression, and my own struggles.

I've learned new information about myself that has changed my entire perspective of my past. Of my whole life and identity. It was enough to shake me to the core. To detach myself from the identities I ever tried on and walked around in. I don't know myself truly...

In the safety of my new apartment, with the flexibility and freedom to be myself and live the way that I want to...

I am realizing just much pain, grief, shame, and heaviness I have carried.

How much I tried to conform, fit in, blend, be liked, and be given mere morsels of attention for all these years.

How much I desperately tried to save people, hold people's hands through their own struggles, and see the best in others.. while silently drowning. I can see now how I spent so long believing I had flaws that needed fixing. How I was missing pieces of the picture that kept me from being successful, having more money, or having more relationships.

The truth is... my toxic life was built upon my childhood trauma and I was in a loop of reliving all of my wounds.. over and over and over again.

I was making friends with people who made me feel like I was "special" to be the one who was close to them.... like only I knew the real them.

I was making friends with people and thinking the relationships were WAYYY more significant than they were.. but ignoring red flags and not seeing how I was being ignored and mistreated. I was too busy worshiping the bond I thought I had. It was one sided.

I was very convinced I was being loved and appreciated, but I was being manipulated, gaslit, and shamed by the people closest to me.

When I stopped being the one to call, text, message, or acknowledge a thing.. everyone disappeared.

When I analyzed the words said to me for what they actually were...I realized i misread or overlooked the truth in a lot of my relationships.

So I went silent. I kept to myself.

I also got very sick.. my whole family in our little apartment did. But then everyone else got better and I didn't. I kept feeling flu like symptoms and completely exhausted.

I now KNOW I have been feeling all the HEAVY grief of seeing things for what they were.

I also know new things about my mental health, which I will blog about when I am ready to. But this new diagnosis I am in the process of getting is allowing me to see myself for the first time.

An actual authentic representation of myself.

Not who I thought I had to be... not who I made myself to be in order to fit in.

As I process my "diagnosis", I realize that I have been obsessed with identity and psychology all these years in order to understand myself. My special interest has always been...me.

Now that I know this... and I have realized what I have.. there is no going back to what I did for work as a solopreneur.

There is no going back to the social platforms I used to use in order to connect with people.

There is no faking it at events or gatherings... no small talk... no texts to ask people how they are doing.

The grief I am feeling... it is a funeral for the girl I was before I realized how blinded I was to my most harmful patterns.

I am laying on the ground curled up just figuring out how to be reborn.

How to create my future in a way that is safe, happy, and allows me to be who I actually am.

Whoever I am...

This is a place I have never emotionally or cognitively been at before...

I have talked a lot in my writing and conceptualizing of rebirth in the past.

What it felt like to be actively on fire and burning...

But what I am doing right now.. isolated.. overwhelmed... sad... "naked"..

I am in real time feeling the rebirth after the burn.. after the death of the former self.

I just have to be brave enough to stand up on my feet and move forward.