I’ve thought about starting a blog for a long time. And like a lot of things in my life, I thought about it, put it somewhere in the back of my brain, thought about it again, got distracted by twelve other ideas, started three projects, probably bought supplies for another one, and then eventually came back around to it.
So here we are. I’m writing a blog.
I’m not entirely sure what this will become, and I think I’m okay with that. If you know me through FRDCreations, you probably know me as someone who makes things. Jewelry, art, random creations that started as an idea at an inappropriate hour and somehow became an actual product. I collect things, sell things, photograph things, write, design and create. My brain rarely shuts off, and there’s usually another idea waiting before I’ve finished the last one.
Creativity has always been a huge part of who I am, but lately I’ve realized that creating isn’t just something I do. It’s how I process my life. Sometimes that means paint. Sometimes it means jewelry. Sometimes it means sitting down and writing something I didn’t even know was inside of me until I saw the words on the page. And sometimes it means staring at a blank screen thinking, Well, shit. What am I supposed to do with all of this?
The last several years of my life have given me a lot of “all of this.”
I’ve experienced love and caregiving. I’ve watched the people I love change. I’ve experienced the strange combination of exhaustion, frustration, fear and gratitude that comes from taking care of someone who needs you. I’ve also experienced grief. A lot of it.
I lost my dad. I lost my Spencer, my soul pup and one of the greatest loves of my life. And most recently, I lost my mom.
There are moments when I still can’t quite comprehend that sentence. My mom died. It’s such a small collection of words for something that has completely rearranged my world.
Grief has changed my writing. It has changed my art. It has changed the way I look at time, relationships, family, purpose and even the ridiculously ordinary parts of life. I’ve learned that grief doesn’t only exist at funerals or beside hospital beds. Sometimes grief is a toothbrush. Sometimes it’s removing a safety lock from a stove because you no longer need it. Sometimes it’s realizing you can leave something somewhere again because there isn’t anyone there to move it. Sometimes it’s walking past a room you haven’t been able to touch yet.
And sometimes it’s laughing at something stupid and then having that weird moment where you remember that the person you would have told about it isn’t here anymore.
Life is weird like that.
I think that’s really what I want this space to be about. Life. Not the polished version. Not some carefully curated version of myself where everything has a purpose and every difficult experience ends with an inspirational lesson. Sometimes there isn’t a lesson. Sometimes something just fucking hurts. Sometimes something pisses me off. Sometimes something is wonderful and I want to talk about it simply because it made me happy.
I’ll probably have things to say about the world around me. I’ll talk about art and writing. I’ll talk about running a small business and the bizarre collection of ideas constantly fighting for space in my brain. I’ll write about grief, but I don’t want grief to be the only thing I write about because, as consuming as it can be, it isn’t the only thing I am.
I’ll write about joy. I’ll write about the things and people I love. I’ll probably write about things that make me angry, things I think need to change and things I don’t understand. And knowing me, I’ll occasionally start writing about one thing and somehow end up somewhere completely different. That’s probably the most accurate representation of my brain anyway.
What I don’t want this blog to become is a place where I pretend to have answers. I don’t. I’m figuring things out in real time.
Right now, I’m figuring out who I am after loss. I’m figuring out how to keep building things while parts of my life have fallen apart. I’m figuring out how to let myself be excited about the future without feeling like I’m abandoning the people I wish could be here to see it. I’m figuring out how to make my home my own again while wishing I didn’t have to. And somewhere in all of that, I’m trying to figure out how to dream again.
But I’m still creating through all of it, and maybe that’s what I’ve always done.
I take pieces of things and turn them into something else. A stone becomes jewelry. A photograph becomes art. An emotion becomes a poem. A memory becomes a story. Grief becomes words on a page. Somehow, something that existed only inside of me becomes something another person can hold, read, wear, see or maybe even recognize a little bit of themselves in.
There’s something incredibly human about that.
So maybe this blog is just another version of the same thing. A place to put all the pieces. My art, my writing, my thoughts, my emotions, my opinions, my memories, the things I’m building and the things I’m still trying to understand.
Some of it will probably be beautiful. Some of it will probably be messy. Some of it might be funny. Some of it might make you uncomfortable or make you cry. And some of it might make absolutely no fucking sense until three posts later.
But it will be mine, and it will be honest.
Before I really move forward with this blog, though, I want to go backward for a little while.
The next few posts will be things I originally shared on my personal Facebook. They’re updates I wrote while I was actually living through some of the biggest changes in my life, and I want them here because I think they help tell the story of how I got from there to here.
I’m not going to backdate those posts. They’ll be published here now, but I’ll include the date each one was originally written and posted on Facebook. I want there to be a distinction between when I wrote something and when I decided to bring it into this space.
Think of those next few posts as a little bit of the history before the present. They won’t be rewritten with everything I know now or cleaned up to make the story flow better. They represent who I was and what I was feeling in those particular moments. Some of those feelings have changed. Some haven’t. But all of them are part of the transition that brought me here.
After that, we’ll see where this thing goes.
Right now, honesty feels more important to me than having everything figured out. So I guess this is the beginning. Not some perfectly planned new chapter or a grand reinvention of myself. Just me showing up exactly where I am.
I’m still grieving. I’m still creating. I’m still questioning things, dreaming about things and trying to figure out who I’m going to be after everything that has happened.
Most importantly, I’m still here.
And I’m still making something out of the pieces.
Welcome to my blog.
write about joyhappened.
Most importantly, I’m still here.
And I’m still making something out of the pieces.
Welcome to my blog.