Editor’s Note: It’s Been a Minute

Hello friends,

I’ve been away for a bit. Okay, it’s been more than a minute. I didn’t feel like I had anything more to write about or was able to inspire my team or that I had any creative juices left. There were a lot of big life changes happening at once and I was overwhelmed. My daily non-stop devotion to this website for three solid years left me burnt out. I needed to go deal with my life. So I stepped away. The site paid a price, losing followers and contributors, but that was a conscious choice and it was the right one for me.

There were so many major stressors happening, big ones. We moved across the country. We tried to have a baby. That was sadly not to be (I will share more on that later). I had to clean out my mother’s house, where she lived for over 30 years. I needed to grieve. I lost both of my parents, had a serious illness, changed careers, dealt with constant physical issues and never really had the time to process it all, especially how my illness affected every part of my life.

I needed to start my business over. And I wanted to do new things, learn something, grow. I found new clients. I made new friends. I am figuring out how to build a new life in a different city than the one I lived in and loved for over 25 years.

Add to that, we wanted to update the website. We had to find a new developer, wait for everything to be completed. And while it’s not entirely finished, it’s new and improved and will be constantly evolving.

So here we are.  I am ready to begin again here at MyNewUsual. I have struggled with the what the direction should be now, as I am no longer living in that day-to-day space of illness. Once you get through it, you want to move on and forget about it. So the question became, is this something I can still do and make a meaningful contribution to that helps other people? I wasn’t sure. The more I thought about, I realized that I am still dealing with the effects of that illness, even almost eight years later. It does change your life forever.

So that was my answer. Even though you may be through the worst part of it, in some ways, it never leaves you. You have to adapt to the new usual, right? That tells me that there is still a purpose here. There are still things to talk about, people who want and need to share their stories and there are new things to discover. And so I will continue on the path that I started, for my mom and for all of you. It may look a little different, sound a little different, but at the heart of it, we’re still trying to help people get used to their new way of life, however it was changed.

I hope you will share with us your new usual, because that’s the thing that helps someone else – telling us how you got through it.

Thanks for sticking around. We appreciate each and every one of you.

With love,
Amy