Where do you go from here?

You might be asking, where do you go from here? How do you get better, when all you want to do is crash and burn.

When my world fell apart, I spent nearly every minute of every day keeping myself from driving my car off the cliff, into embankment that met the Mississippi river. When people asked me what it would take to make myself feel alive again, I contemplated trying to swim from one bank of the Mississippi to the other, to force myself to fight for my life. Taking my life was not the legacy I was about to leave my children, and it wasn’t that I truly wanted to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. So, I threw myself into writing to survive. I had already written a historical romance, and while I revealed a pale version of something inside me, buried within that fictional story, I wanted to write something paranormal so I could reveal even more.

Stephen King said that fiction is the truth within the lie, and I began to put those hidden kernels into stories that were otherwise completely fantasy, but I didn’t stop to do much in the way of marketing. Oh, I tried. I went on Facebook and Twitter. I went on Goodreads and other places like Goodreads.

Eventually, I burned out, disappearing from online, but kept writing. I would write, put them up, and write some more. It's how I survived. My health suffered severely from the state I was in, and I ended up in front of doctor after doctor. I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos and Barrters Syndrome, both things that are genetic, and I was born with, but now these things that had always given me symptoms went into full swing. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and suffered body aches that constantly made me feel like I'd been beaten, but also made me feel like I always had influenza. I was diagnosed with POTs where my blood pressure fell below 70 while my heart rate skyrocketed, which explained why I always felt lightheaded and wanted to pass out. My heart was always irritable and threw PVC's, but now often felt like it would completely stop and start again from the complete lack of electrolytes I was losing, and I landed in the ER with bigeminy heart rhythms. I had less that one mg of Magnesium in my blood, and the ER doctor told me I likely had less than that in my cells. I was put on potassium-sparing diuretics and potassium packets. I was put on high doses of magnesium, and while I improved, there was still something missing. Recently, I was put on a medication for the POTS and it was like the lights came back on. And while I still have constant flare-ups with the pain, and I still want to pass out when I stand up, my head actually feels normal.

I never thought I would feel this way again.

It’s been a long time, but slowly I've recovered myself, first mentally and emotionally, and now physically. I've healed the devastation that drove me over the edge in the first place, and I will share that story over time, and while I may not be healthy, I feel like I stand a decent chance, where I can now live with my physical symptoms, instead of just survive them. I’ve been doing more than writing to survive myself. I am marketing again. And while I have a lot to overcome with my books, with the mistakes I've made with them, I'm in a place where I can actually enjoy the journey, mistakes and all.

I will share my journey with you, and that’s what my first non-fiction book is about, Reclaiming Your Sacred Woman. I hope you will join me as I figure out how to share my story, and not just bury pieces of my thoughts and beliefs in my fictional stories. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stories, and feel this amazing elation when others share my joy, and I love them even when others don’t. I look forward to meeting any who would like to join me, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next, as I figure out where I’m going from here. I look forward to getting to know you all, and I hope those I built friendships with before I disappeared, will forgive me. I tried many times to come back on here and do the work I wanted to do, but I just couldn't at that time. Now, I can:)

Thank you, friends.