Happy New Year friends.

It’s hard to believe we are at the beginning of a brand new year.   For me, the past year feels like it passed in a blur even though it was filled with activity and adventures.

I am beginning to realize that the past 19 months, from the day we left our life in New York, making such huge changes in our life, have passed in a blur.

I think I went on autopilot that day in May 2017 when we pulled away from our home.   I couldn’t process the change, so I put those feelings in a tidy box and buried them.

Little did I know that less than a  month later, I’d have more change and grief to process when my mother died in June.   We were in West Yellowstone Montana at the time, so I wasn’t there with her.  It didn’t seem real, so I got out another box, stuffed in the grief and buried it deep.

In December of 2017, we lost Tara, my heart dog.  The sadness was too much for me, and again, I packed the grief away.

I’ve had to go back and read some of my writing to remember what the rest of  2018 held as it’s obvious that the boxes of loss and grief I packed away were keeping me on autopilot, affecting my memory and connection to “the now.”   There were some wonderful memories made, and I’m so glad I wrote about them, but I see how much my writing changed during that time.  I had lost the unfiltered sense of humor that was so much a part of my daily life and writing.

In the last few days, a group of dear friends who have recently suffered their own hard losses has been talking about the way we process grief or don’t.    The conversation has helped me realize that I haven’t really allowed myself to feel the change and loss of the last year and a half.

I don’t have a clue how to dig up those buried boxes, but I know I need to do it to be able to be here in the present and live each day with intention.

So, by necessity, this will be the year of unpacking and examining those boxes of change and grief.  I hope that in one of them I can find my lost sense of humor, my sense of adventure and the joy of living and writing again.   I hope somewhere under all that grief and change I can find my words again.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, adventure-filled year.  If you have your own buried boxes to find and unpack, I send you my best wishes for the task.  Thanks for sticking with me this past year,  I hope to be back soon with the old sense of humor and a renewed love for all the adventures this life holds.

Stay tuned….