Thank you all for your overwhelming support of my recently popular post on how to clean my truck’s upholstered seats. Many of you e-mail me and ask why I have not posted in several months. Others continually ask me to please come back and blog, because they love what I share. Well, you asked for it and now you have it. Here is why I have been MIA from Inspired-Housewife for nearly nine months.
My intention was to take a few weeks off from writing. I figured it would give me enough time to regroup, get my groove back, and get back into writing. Life happened and my blog suffered. I wanted to write, but every time I tried my mind drew a blank. It was as if my fingers were frozen in time. I knew I had great cleaning tips to share and many other things I learned and felt would be helpful to pass along. It wasn’t happening, and even writing this post is not easy to express.
My Journey Out of Darkness
I am not sure where to begin other than to say I missed writing, and even more so, I missed the interaction with my readers. I started this blog right after the birth of my third child. I wanted to blog for a couple of years, but was scared to make the proverbial leap of faith. My husband encouraged me, telling me it was now or never, so I jumped. I LOVED writing, but I thought nobody would actually read it, but it was my hobby so I did not care. I never expected to get such great feedback and you all kept telling me to keep sharing what I had to say.
Then the elephant entered the room. I felt like I suffocated with every living breath. Something in my life had to go for a short time, so I stopped writing to take care of me. I have always been the type of person who put her needs last, but I could not do it any longer. My world went dark. I started feeling more emotional, and then it went downhill from there. I had what many women get after having a baby: postpartum depression (ppd). My ppd was severe. If you look at my blog dates you can see my posts dwindle down to a bare trickle. As time went on it got harder and harder to write, much less even keep my house clean, my kids fed, and even getting a shower was almost too much work. In another blog post I will write more about ppd and its presenting signs. I will tell more of my story in detail, because I have done so already within my local community, and I saved at least ten women from suffering in silence.
During this time we were given notice by the Army that we were moving to Natick, MA, and so we put our house up for sale after we received our orders. Three weeks before our house closing the Army canceled our orders and played cat and mouse with our lives. Those in charge had no job for my husband to stay at his current location, but yet wanted to keep him stationed there anyway. This was a no-go for my husband’s career, and then how long would they keep us there anyway just to be moved again? At the peak of this chaos, a family member who lived across the country from us apparently could not handle the stress of uncertainty in our lives. This person already knew about my struggle with ppd, but instead of asking questions to resolve their concerns, they jumped to conclusions, and threatened us without basis to call the police and CPS. They believed our children were at risk, because the stress in our lives could cause me to hurt our children. The events with the Army move would be stressful to any person. We thought we could be homeless within a few weeks, and unknown change is difficult to express to children. As a mother to a kid with autism this was HUGE to me, because he thrives on stability. When there is no stability regression occurs, and it can take months to repair and return to the same functional level. I was livid and scared down to my core about the threat of my children being taken out of my care due to accusations from some who was completely out of touch with reality. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and now what I suffered from was not ppd, it was full blown depression. I am only human and so is my husband, but the chaos this person caused to our family was worse than anything the Army threw at us.
The Light Shines Through in the End
In the end, with lots of prayers and some help from higher ups in the Army, they reassigned us only a few hours down the road from where we were stationed. We were sad it was not in Massachusetts near our family in Maine, but we were thankful to have a place to call home. My husband started his new job in May, and I spent the next several weeks unpacking, finding our son new therapists, getting doctors lined up for the kids and I, and learning about this new place called home. The move was an absolute blessing in many ways: my son has fantastic therapists and is making huge gains, he started a wonderful private school with a small student to teacher ratio, the climate is nice, and the town boasts many lovely shops and three organic grocery stores. It was a lot of work moving a family of five and all the change that came with it, but we did it!
As for my writing, I actually have been writing a lot, but in journal form, and most of it is not for public consumption. I believe, however, it is time for me to take the leap and get to blogging once again. So, I will be addressing a lot of new topics, many that are near and dear to me and my life. I have some pretty fabulous cleaning tips to share, thanks to my son who experimented with hot pink nail polish and other compounds.
I will start back slowly, but I sincerely thank you for your continued support of my blog, even while it grew cobwebs.
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