Starting Again

by | Jan 8, 2018 | being real, deep and personal, deep thoughts, family

I’ve received a lot of emails, comments, messages, & so forth hoping we are all well & stating how much blog posts were missed. I didn’t reply to a single one, because I wasn’t really sure what to say. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if I’d continue with this little blog, my intention when I created this blog was to connect family across the world, especially grandparents, with what was going on in our lives, & over time it’s grown & changed, & with that the reasons I posted various things.

Children grow up & life changes & with that the purpose & use of this blog has changed. That’s not at all different now. I really struggled to find the right words over the past 18 months as my heart was heavy with my own emotions & burdens, that I didn’t want to post here. And while that road has been painful & difficult, it’s also been a private ordeal for me.

Eighteen months ago a family member verbally attacked me. It was a painful ordeal. I allowed myself to be defined by that attack. The words of that family member hurt deeply, as did the actions. Sadly, other family members joined the fray, but there were also those who did not. 

For me, the those who didn’t step in hurt me as deeply as those who were calling me ugly things & slamming accusations at me. The craziest part about all of it was that it was over some big world event {not the election thank you very much, all though I took a nifty beating on that one too..}

It’s pretty hard when people you trust attack. It made my world stifling hot, small, & painful to face. Being an Expat is never an easy thing, you are always an ambassador for your home country, but you are also an adopted member of the country you live in. You are never quite home because everywhere becomes home, which means you are always homesick. 
You never fit in no matter which country you are in. You get tired of good-byes which are deeply emotional & it can make starting new friendships hard because you don’t want to make an emotional bond that will, one day, be severed.

And all this hot mess of emotions came floating up from that place I keep them deeply locked & under control. I’ve spent the past year & a half fighting them. It’s hard, you know, to fight emotions, to take care of you when you’re always the one taking care of everyone else.

Over the holidays at the end of 2017 my husband had two glorious weeks off work, & they were the best two weeks we’ve enjoyed in a long long time. All our stressors were gone, which include the beloved Nana we care for on a regular basis. Yes, I just admitted that it’s a stressor, because it is. It’s no easier parenting a parent than it is a child. 

You have to be everywhere & everything at once. You have to be both listener & story teller, parent & child, helpful & needy. There were days prior to that vacation where I hit the floor running, & by bedtime realised I’d only eaten one meal & hadn’t had a shower. Busy, stressed, overly emotional, & exhausted are mild adjectives to express what I was dealing with.

So those two, stress free, weeks where our schedule was our own, our family time was truely our own, was amazing! It left time to do some deep soul searching & to consider what things needed to change to move me in a new direction. To let go of the pain & emotions that were swirling around.

And I was reminded how I use to enjoy doing things, how I use to have hobbies, how I use to write often both for enjoyment & for a stress relief. How I use to craft, & often, for the very same purposes. See, when I say I’m busy, stressed, & exhausted I’m not kidding!  

It’s funny how one little word or comment can change a life, both good & bad. 

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to. People are going to be mean at times, & people are going to be amazing at times. How we choose to react to that is totally within our power.

Not that I didn’t know that before, but it’s hard to let your heart heal when you are busy being there for everyone else. When you are busy helping them heal their own hurts & pains & falsely tell yourself that it didn’t hurt, that you’ll be okay while hiding in the bathroom crying.

Which is when I realised, that part of what I enjoy doing is blogging. I enjoy sharing that insanity of our lives because it makes me laugh. I laughed so hard last night over a 2 minute cake, yep— really! I love sharing our school days so we can look back on them & be reminded of all the amazing things we learned. I even enjoy, on rare occasions, sharing the more personal things, rather like this blog post.

A big thank you to each of you who reached out & wondered how things were. They made me smile, & the truth is I AM fine, a little battle weary, sporting a few new scars, but I AM fine.

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