A Belated Hello to 2019

Greetings lovely readers and a belated welcome to a brand new year. I hope your 2019 is going better than mine!

At the beginning of January, traditionally I take a reflective look back at the year. At my successes and failures, the things I have learned and my plans for the future. Whilst procrastinating filling in my tax return, obvs.

This year, however, events have taken rather a different turn. 2018 was a mixture of hard times and of amazing ones. Jewellery orders came in droves (thank you lovely customers for supporting my small business) and I had to turn down a lot of custom orders as I just didn’t have the time to fit them in. Juggling my mentally-demanding day job with running the business and the additional time-consuming task of working on the house renovations left me so busy that some days I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

But I also had some wonderful times with friends, a fabulous holiday to Venice with my mum and another magical holiday to Italy for our friends’ wedding. I won places on two different business development programs, the boy and I made plans for me to work less hours in 2019 so I had more time for jewellery and fun. Most of the time consuming work was finished on the house, and I was filled with happiness and joy for the year ahead. It felt like a real turning point for everything in my life.

However, my whole world fell apart when the boy then suddenly announced that he was leaving me after 13 years together (for the head of corporate legal at his work it transpires, despite him trying to gaslight me into thinking it was all my fault). I was completely devastated, heartbroken, and also faced the prospect of losing my business and the home I’ve worked so hard for, as well as my best friend. He took all of my joy and hope, crushed it into a tiny cube, then set it on fire.

A couple of months on, I am slowly gathering up the pieces of my shattered heart and trying to put my life back together. It will not be the life I hoped for and that we had planned together, and things are going to be almost impossible for me to cope with financially, but I will survive somehow.

Writing about my personal pain and grief publicly is something I thought hard about, but I’ve been so open about my journey so far I figured I may as well carry on! I also believe that if everyone was a bit more open and honest about their mental health and life struggles, perhaps we’d all be a bit nicer to each other.

Please bear with me whilst I regroup and try to find my joy again. Tomorrow I may not cry.

LG xxx