Moving forward…

So it has been a very long time since I’ve written.  Life took a downward turn, which I wrote about here.  I suppose I had a rough time adjusting to that for a lot of reasons.  I had a lot of dark days that really took a lot out of me.  Grief is one of those things that is just hard to manage.  One moment, you feel fine, like you are finally ready to move forward.  But the next moment… something hits you and you spiral right back down.  That’s the way it was for me.  If I’m being honest, it’s the way it still is sometimes.

The anger that people talk about with grief… it’s real.  Anger and resentment cycled with sadness and guilt because I felt those things.  It’s a vicious cycle that is unbelievably hard to break out of.  So what do you do?  You accept it and work through it day by day.

I distanced myself from a lot of things last year.  I need to.  I needed to put as little pressure on myself as possible, which I think helped.  I stopped blogging here and I even let my book blog drift away.  I spent my time with family and reading and writing.  It was healing.  And it helped, too, to have our lives change again.

First… we got orders last January that took us from Arizona to Hawaii.  We flew here on my birthday last August and I couldn’t be happier.  This is my soul home and has been since I first set foot on the island in the 1990’s.  We live about 10 minutes from the nearest beach and I can see the ocean from the end of the road into our neighborhood.  That has gone a long way to healing.

And even better, my brother and his girlfriend had the most beautiful baby girl last September.  Braydee Patricia Ingram, a gorgeous little squishy girl with whom I am in love.  My brother is dadding like a boss and I ‘ve never seen him so happy as he is with his little girl.  It makes my heart sing!

Things are looking up for me, too.  I’m almost finished with my first novel, Kissing Frogs, and have several others in the works.  You can read all about that at my author site here.  I’ve also started two new businesses.  The first is Salty Kisses, a wedding officiant business.  The second is The Story Tender, a editing and author services business.  The cost of publishing a book is so high and a lot of that comes with editing.  So I wanted to help by providing quality editing at an affordable cost that doesn’t break the bank.

So that’s moving forward…

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