RELEASED!

This week, three years ago I had done everything within my power to give my children a beautiful Christmas and my daughter a happy birthday. Although almost a year had already passed since their father had moved out without warning,  it was our first december on our own. The winter holidays have the potential to be a time of magic, as well as the tendency to illuminate loss and magnify grief.  I remember making it to this last week of the year and thinking- I'm almost there. I will survive this hellish year after all. I chose my word for the upcoming year: HOPE. Here is that post, like a little time capsule.

Thank goodness for my kids. They were the reason I made myself get out of bed every morning and that I was doing more than just making it... I was determined to to heal for them.

To learn everything I could about how to face darkness and come out on top. 

To thrive and help them to do the same. 

It was the hardest challenge of my life. Desolation was always at my side in the beginning, but I acted brave for them... until one day it was true.

By that Christmas in 2012, some good days were sprinkled in with the constant rough ones. I started seeing glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel. And I began writing down my process. As a writer and an artist, there was an overwhelming need to document my return towards wholeness. I blogged and journaled the tools I was discovering (and most often creating) to guide me forward.

 My second book was emerging long before I was ready to actually write it. But it was the book I was wishing someone could place in my hands at that very moment. So I began. I knew it was about hope and creating. I prayed it would bring my healing and maybe help others who were struggling through one of life's inevitable transitions. Several years in the living and making, and TODAY it goes out into the world!! TODAY!!

Hope, Make Heal is filled with the 20 projects, plus recipes and meditations, that brought me to this point today. I am a confident and proud single mother of two very healthy and amazing kids (one getting ready to head out into the world in a matter of months). There are fresh traditions and new people in our lives, as well as wonderful (bittersweet) memories of a different life long ago. I can now hold the story in my heart without feeling crippled by it. I laugh. A lot. And so do my children.

I am so happy to have arrived at this moment!

*all photos in this post our projects from Hope, Make, Heal- 20 Crafts to Mend the Heart.