Hi Everyone,
Thank you for hanging in there with us. We haven’t posted a blog in several weeks. Full transparency, I’ve had writer’s block. We have had a lot going on, within our family, around the property, at work and in our community that it’s taken a lot to sit down and focus. I simply have not known what to write about with so much distraction, so forgive me if this rambles. In March, my two biological children, Lauryn and Cameron lost their father very unexpectedly. Given that this was also my first husband, his death sent waves of emotion through me and my family. COVID 19 also hit all of us in March, causing physical distancing and shelter in place, which as you can imagine impacted our ability to support each other through this and postponed any memorial service for closure. Whenever families are faced with such events everyone experiences and expresses feelings of grief, support, peace, sadness all differently and there’s always the element of “life must go on”. We must still go to work, attend to household needs, address health concerns, find some joy, exercise, interact, run our errands, care for pets etc. That’s what we normally do when we experience loss or change. These current times, though, require that we do those things in very different ways than what we may have done in the past. Interaction is more distanced, attending to household needs and running errands takes more thought and planning, we must find joy in things that we may not have noticed before. Earlier this month, we were able to memorialize my children’s father. We came together armed with masks and held the service outside so that we could social distance. If I said that we didn’t hug or that we wore our masks the whole time, I would be lying. We did, though, adjust, and worked to stay safe. One of the consequences of that was that Mark and I were not able to provide the daycare to Cash for a couple of weeks following. This we understand and support, and yet still felt sad and isolated because of it. We are actively planning for a trip at the end of August to see Jake and Alex in AZ., and a trip to CO. to see Lauryn. There’s so much more to think about now when trying to connect with our family. There are rules around Cameron being able to leave his independent living group home that have to be considered in order to visit him. This blog is called “Awesome Empty Nesting” because Mark and I truly feel that we are living our best lives and we are doing it intentionally. We make decisions for ourselves and for our family in ways that promote everyone’s growth and pursuit of independent joy. We are consistently evaluating how our actions impact the support of others and have had to make adjustments and we will continue to do so. Recent events have certainly caused us to look deeper into the actions we take and the words we say to impact that mission. I promised Mark that I wouldn’t write about COVID 19 all the time, and I plan to keep that promise but I also believe that if we ignore the impact we are not being real. Yes, life goes on and it’s beautiful, fun, surprising and joyful. There are just times when you have to look a bit deeper to find it and be more intentional in the pursuit of it. Thanks again for reading and staying connected with us. Stayed tune the next blog to focus on our cats’ hunting abilities (and other things farm related)….I’ve been keeping some data. LOL