A Reintroduction

It's been a while since I've posted on the regular. The biggest reason is grief. It sort of takes over every part of your life, and you don't know how long it will stay and to what intensity you'll experience it from day to day. You see, on January 20, 2017 we lost our son, Colby, at 14 weeks and 2 days gestation. I'll tell that story another day, but it shook us right to our core. I am not the same person I was on January 19th. I will never be that person again. So here I am to introduce this new self to you.

My name is Amanda, mommy of an angel, wife to Philip, and student of psychology. I have been blogging on and off here since January of 2014 and I'm hoping to make a comeback here this holiday season. I've blogged about food, marriage, DIY projects, and silly stuff like this funny conversation with my husband. This year, when I've blogged I've talked about those fun things, but I've also decided to share more about mental health and grief, as well as what not to say to a bereaved parent. I don't want all of my posts to be sad and/or serious, but I do think these issues need to be addressed, and I will continue to talk about them, as well as my son. Losing him has really brought home the importance of raising awareness about mental health, grief, and pregnancy loss.

I've talked a little about this on Instagram already, but I wanted to talk about it more here. For a long time after January, my life was make up of more bad days than good. And by bad days, I mean days where my grief has been so overwhelming that just getting out of bed was a victory. Recently, it has reversed. I have more good days than bad ones, and I am so grateful for them. I'm learning to turn my bad days into good ones, by reminding myself that Colby would want me to be happy and to enjoy things again. Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't. Therapy and medications help a lot, and I am not ashamed to admit that. You have to do what you have to do to get your body and mind balanced.

Hubs and I celebrated 3 years of marriage in April, so we're nearly to 4 years now, haha. We live in Missouri, but want to move as soon as we can. We have two cats, Pumpkin and Misty. A few of you will be wondering about Bear, our great pyrenees. Well, after nearly 6 months of tearful deliberation, we decided to re-home him. He has needs that we were unable to fill, no matter how hard we tried. We did find him an amazing home with a family of 3 who have a large fenced in yard, which is just what he needs. Our home is not the same without Bear, but this decision was about what is best for him, not what is best for me and Hubs. 

Let's end this on a good note! I am this close to being done with my BA in Psychology. Like we're talking just weeks away! I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do afterwards, a lot depends on if we get pregnant again. Yes, we are trying to get pregnant again, but we are still battling my PCOS and infertility. Hubs has returned to school and I am so incredibly proud of him. He's decided to finish is Bachelors and get a Management Information Systems degree, which is a mix of IT and Business Administration. 

This is the new me.