I’ve started writing again after a very long period of neglecting this blog. I recently decided to go back through several previous posts to review the sentiments I shared as long as five or six years ago now and I realized just how much has changed since then. I’m not sure exactly why I stopped writing here and the time has certainly flown by, but I’ve been writing more frequently in my journal over the past few months and it has led me back here to the whole idea of “Reinventing Ann”.
While I’ve had a few years now of gradually moving forward, of taking on new challenges and expanding my independence and in fact my world, this past year in particular has most definitely been one of significant growth and change that has brought me to a whole new place. Indeed, I had forgotten about many things I wrote in the past, and it was both humorous and somber to look back at some of my written expressions that fit with the particular time and space I was in when I shared them.
You see, I have this nagging fault.
In the past, when I’ve taken time to write regularly in a journal, stopped for any length of time, and then gone back to it later – sometimes years later – I see things that are no longer “me” as I am in that new moment, and my inclination is to rip out the pages that represent an attitude or experience I might either regret or would express differently now that I’m more mature or enlightened. I realize this nearly defeats the purpose of a journal, which I believe most people see as a way of documenting things in a specific time and place so they CAN look back and see where they were at, physically, mentally, or emotionally, happy to have record of exactly what I look back at and wish to erase. That is perhaps the old perfectionist in me creeping in and the older I get, the more quickly I recognize it now: that need to “fix”, to “make better” something that could just easily be left in time where it was, as it was, because all these different stages make up a life.
So here I am now, four and a half years from my last shared post, and before I embark on sharing my present day “adventures’ (or simple thoughts as the case might be on any given day) I felt it important to note – for those who might only be finding my blog for the first time in 2022 – that my outlook on life, the world, my future, has very much evolved in ways too numerous to list, and while many past posts weren’t necessarily about grief or pain but general ideas that could stand even today, certain things you will read in the more raw posts will give you a glimpse only of what I described above, which is where I was and what I felt at a specific time in life.
I have revised none of them; I have removed none of them. Going forward the reality of change will no doubt be clear. I’m older and wiser and, by the grace of God, my heart has healed much, and I’ve made it through to the other side of grief.
I have a lot more life to live, and some of it will likely show up here now that I am back in the swing of writing! I’ll leave you with a sweet photo of my beautiful granddaughter who is obviously the light of my life and this new role of grandma is everything I was told it would be. How blessed I am to have yet another way to experience the joy of living!
I am still Reinventing Ann 🙂
Reinventing Ann 