When my grandmother died, it destroyed me. She was my first real loss, and unfortunately for me, my first real loss happened to be one of the most important people in my life, one of the most influential. See, my grandmother was more than a grandmother. She was a major mother figure in my life and her relationship with me was based on true, unconditional love. It was not materialistic, she couldn’t afford to spoil me materially like some grandmothers do. But that didn’t matter. Children don’t *need* that. All I needed as a child was love, patience and acceptance and she provided all of it seemingly effortlessly.

When she died I was lost. My whole family was lost. She was the anchor of the family and when she was taken from us so prematurely (she was only 66) by cancer we all fell apart and grieved in different ways. I’m not sure anyone knew how deeply it affected me because I didn’t show my emotions, rather I bottled them up and only let myself cry when I was alone. I was always deeply touched by music, and lyrics specifically so I decided to try to write about my feelings. From that, I started to write poetry and started journaling. It was cathartic and it provided me an outlet for what would be a difficult and confusing time as a teenager.

Four years after her death I also lost my beloved grandfather, then shortly after that my uncle took his own life. It was a horrific time, those years. I feel like I saw the inside of the funeral home more times than any teenager should. The only things I had to cling to were music and writing. I listened to music every moment I could and wrote, wrote, wrote. It was all depressing, I’ll be honest, but it was an outlet. And I needed that. Writing was my main release, my positive one. During this time I struggled with self harm as well, which, is hard to admit and talk about, I don’t talk about it often. But I want to be more transparent. I think it is important to talk about these things. We all struggle with different demons, and that for a while, was what felt like the only way to deal with the heaviness of grief and other issues that were going on in that time of my life.

Things really turned around for me when I graduated high school. Even though I was afraid of what “life after school” would mean, I still felt a sense of optimism. I was young, I could, in theory, do anything now. I just had to decide where I wanted to start. That summer I felt like for the first time I could just be myself. I experimented with different fashion, makeup, hair styles. I widened my taste in music just by being open to new things. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to impress or that I could be made fun of because I wasnt in high school anymore. It was an amazing transition time.

Fast forward to fall of 2011, I met my husband and truly felt like I had found my home in him. He is my best friend, and he was the light at the end of the tunnel after those difficult years of loss, grief and pain. I still don’t know how I got so lucky to not only have met HIM but that I met him so young (I was 18 and he was 20). I feel truly blessed that we have gotten to grow up into adults together in a way. And he is to this day my best friend and number one supporter.

The thing is, when the dark cloud lifted from my life, so did my ability to express myself in writing and I have never understood why. After the circumstances of Julia’s birth even, I just couldn’t bring myself to write. Writing her birth story was one of the hardest things I ever had to write because it was the worst thing that happened to us, terrifying and painful, and the feeling of writing out that kind of pain was not cathartic. It was just painful. It made me physically sick and truly, I did it mostly because I did not want to forget any important details. It was more of a documentation than catharsis. Even so, I have a hard time writing about the GOOD things and I think it might be because that has just never been my relationship with writing.

But I love to write. I love the feeling of accomplishment when I am done. So this year I am trying to be intentional about just doing it. There are things I can and want to share, and I don’t want to be afraid. I want to be the open book that so many people don’t realize that I am! Small talk can be difficult for me, but the real stuff? Real life?? I live for that kind of human connection. I can talk about the real stuff. I think it is SO important to do so.

With that long-winded explanation out of the way, I just wanted to let you all know that I’m starting a new blog series and it is about simply, real life story telling. Sharing some of my memories and the life lessons attached to them. Now I gotta say, If you read this far you are AMAZING. I definitely did ramble but I felt I needed an explanation to this upcoming post series but I didn’t want to take away from the first memory I am sharing by explaining why I was doing it within that post, if that makes any sense at all.

I’ll be posting soon 🙂 Have a great night!