Hello Again!
There’s been an unmissable gap of time since I’ve last checked in —
Intentional, necessary & also now expired, this break I’ve taken from writing.
In February I left a job, and while sparing details, this drastic change in my schedule, my community, and a portion my security came at the right time. For the first time ever, the primary source of my income was work I would seek out. I became a full-time freelancer. Now, full-time is subjective. I wasn’t working forty hours a week. Leaving this job brought many levels of freedom to my days, and my last official shift landed the morning after an unfortunately traumatic experience that led to beginning of the biggest mental battle I would yet face in life.
One sweet night back in February, on the 12th, my dear friends and I were sitting on the patio of one of my most favorite restaurants. For context since it has been some time, anxiety and depression is nothing new to me — and as a new piece of information, a trigger response of my anxiety is to faint (something I learned about myself in therapy after this whole shindig went down). I have fainted in the past as a response to a certain phobia I have (again, something I learned after this night), yet at the time I thought it more of a fluke than anything. The consistency brought clarity to this trigger response as something that I needed to work through, and that, truthfully, I deserved to live free from.
So I started EMDR therapy. This treatment targets a specific trauma and involves a seriously deep amount of diving into your past in order to completely dig everything up from the root. Many, many, many sessions of this, many tears and fits of wanting to quit, pleas of desperation to be who I was before that night back in February, many moments where I felt my soul beneath the floor where I only felt myself capable of being brought back to the surface by my extraordinary family and friends. EMDR was the hardest work I have ever had to do. I quit my job at the most perfect time to give myself a space and a season to grow in ways I really never imagined myself capable of.
All that to say, I wasn’t working with the same passion or fervor I once was.
Almost exactly nine months later and the joy I have in saying my character has been renewed tenfold. My strength, the relationships I have with those who have sat with me on my hardest and lowest days, the gladness I have in working the jobs I do — it is all the result of something I would never again wish to face in my life but is entirely something I am grateful for. I love who I am and am proud to know what I am capable of.
Over the last weekend, my boyfriend and one of my longest friends drove a few hours up the coast to celebrate the birthdays of one of the greatest people I’ve been lucky to know, someone who has seen many sides of me — an eating disorder years ago and a months-long depressive season earlier this year. We sat around the fire with her family, folks I haven’t seen in years but who hold such a dear and decent sized piece of my heart, and I was encouraged to share the ways life teaches me to sprout good things out of tough thought patterns. Even my journal has seen such slim pieces of my mind this last year. Please take this post as a sturdy show of how me I am again feeling, and how grateful I am to know people out there care to read all my run-ons.
These are the places I’ve been working with since leaving my old job back in February:
AhbA
Photo, graphic design, branding, websites + social media still hold a dear place in my heart. I’m truly proud & glad to work in tandem with two businesses run by beautifully hearted people who inspire me to give them my very best.
I pray my Kitchen Club makes its way back onto my list of priorities, especially given the nearness of the holiday season. Until then, expect to find me here and on instagram every here and there.
Thank you for being patient, for supporting my work if you’ve been following me on social media, and for reading this far if you have. My most dear thanks and most well wishes to you!