RESET :: HEALING

Well it’s a new year and with that comes my favorite time to reset goals, visions, and desires. For the past couple of years I have weaned off the internet community of scrapbookers for a much needed break from getting completely and utterly burnt out.

I had spent years creating and sharing videos, kits, layouts, design teams, classes, etc. etc. etc., all while I was also in the middle of trying to make my relationship with my ex husband work. It was a difficult time in my life and I used scrapbooking as a way to cope and detach from reality. All this while trying to continue my career in education and becoming a mother of 3 in a short span of 6 years.

The point is, I burned myself out. There was ZERO ability to create anything inside of me after I had my third baby. At the end of 2022 I was completely out of creativity and that is when I took a break from social media and my blog. I also stopped scrapbooking. Altogether. Nothing.

The last page I made was one intended to be for a Big Picture Classes course in the Spring of 2022. I never finished that class. I never created another scrapbook layout after this one. See it below…

But who’s to blame? I don’t think anyone in my position would be able to create anything, especially while living in survival mode for so many years.

The break I took allowed me to focus on healing my heart, focusing on my mental health and changing my life for the better. I continued through difficult years of therapy and began to find the strength to stand up for myself and to regain my self-confidence.

I also focused on my career so that I could regain my independence as a soon-to-be single mother and self-sustaining millennial woman.

As I began to heal, I found that journaling was my go-to and I focused on expressing my yearning for creating and playing with paper inside my journals.

I focused on my ONE LITTLE WORDS each year, and used that as a catalyst to continue on my path and plans for becoming independent. I still documented my life through videos and photographs, but it’s been stored in my phone, and most memories of the last 4 years have not been documented.

Inside I felt fear and sadness for what once had been my love: to create scrapbook pages for my family. I had to take the time to grieve the part of my hobby that I connected to my love for my family unit. In addition to the grieving, I also learned a valuable lesson in letting go, emotionally and physically (quite literally). I felt like I was losing the reason for my “WHY”, without my marriage and family, how would I do that? I didn’t have an answer to this question.

It wasn’t until I learned that in order to bring back the love I had for my creativity, I had to let go of the image I once had and recreate it into something else. Something new, but just as beautiful.

Yes, I am crafting with a broken heart. But I am not broken and neither is my creativity. That part was always mine, and not from anyone else. My creativity and expression was not lost in the marriage. I get to bring that with me wherever I go.

So I am happy to share my heart once again, this time more earnestly, more passionately, more me, more inspired…

So today, I come to the conclusion that it was all meant to be this way all along. As seen in this throwback I have on my FB page from the year my life changed.

2017 Me is giving love to this 2025 me:

DREAM BIG GIRL!!

Anything is possible, reach for the STARS! XO