It’s been exactly a year since I last sat down in this corner of the internet.
Twelve months. 365 days of a blinking cursor on a blank screen, waiting for the right words to come. For a long time, the silence here felt heavy, but looking back, I realize it was necessary. Sometimes you have to step away from chronicling your life simply to survive it.
A lot has happened since I was last here. If I had to sum up the past year in a single word, it would be shift. The ground beneath my feet didn't just move; it completely re-mapped itself.
On Losses
The hardest part of this year has been the empty spaces left behind. I’ve had to say goodbye to people I love deeply, culminating in the most devastating loss of my life: the recent passing of my mom.
Losing a parent alters your DNA. It fractures the timeline of your life into a definitive before and after.
In the weeks following her passing, the world felt painfully loud and entirely too fast, while I felt still. Grief has a way of stripping away all your trivial worries, leaving you bare-ended and raw. I spent days just navigating the fog, learning how to breathe through the quiet, and figure out who I am in this new after.
It's funny how grief also unearths your desire to isolate. I thought the overarching pain of loss would make me turn to my community more when in reality, it diverted me away from it. I wanted to isolate myself and just stay in my bubble until things made sense. In the end, the bubble burst and I was left wanting to be alone in a sea of people.
Alongside that deep emotional grief came the relentless, mundane reality of "adulting." When life falls apart, the bills still need paying, the paperwork still needs sorting, and the everyday machinery of life demands that you keep turning the crank. It felt exhausting to hold space for immense sorrow while simultaneously navigating the rigid structures of being a mom, a manager, and ironically, of growing up.
And then, there was the career shift.
I also found myself at a professional crossroads. The path I was on no longer felt aligned with the person I was becoming. So, I took a leap and slowly realigned my goals to what I now wanted for myself. I stepped into a completely new professional chapter internally.
I realized that if my life was going to be entirely different anyway, I might as well build it into something I actually wanted to live.
Which brings me to today. To this post. To the fact that you are reading this.
I am happy to tell you that the fog is finally starting to lift. I’m not entirely on the other side of my grief (I don't think you ever truly are), but I am learning to carry it with me rather than letting it anchor me to the floor.
Lately, a strange and beautiful thing has happened: I feel the warmth of renewed enthusiasm creeping back in.
Losing people you love forces you to look at the clock. It reminds you, with painful clarity, that our time here is finite and incredibly fragile. Because of that, I’ve felt a deep, pulling urge to find a more purposeful meaning to my life. I don't want to just drift through the motions anymore. I want to build, to create, and to live intentionally.
The Promises I'm Making to Myself
So, what does this new chapter look like? It looks like coming home to the things that used to bring me joy before the world got heavy.
I am restarting my projects. The creative ideas I shelved a year ago are finally being dusted off. They look a little different now, shaped by everything I’ve been through, but they are alive again.
I am returning to this blog. This space has always been my digital sanctuary, and I missed it. Moving forward, my core goal is to write here once a week. No pressure for perfection... just honest, raw, consistent storytelling.
A weekly date between me, my keyboard, and you.
If you’ve stuck around during this year of radio silence, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your quiet presence in my analytics and my inbox has meant more than you know.
Here’s to midyear musings, to fresh starts built from the ashes of hard seasons, and to figuring out the next steps together.
No comments: