December Overshare

It's been such an interesting and inspiring year for me personally in many ways.  The business has grown tremendously and I have grown with it, in ways I did not expect.  I have come to understand that this project here, has been partly me searching for a new identity after spending half my life as a parent. This realization is something I had to learn as it unfolded over time, it's exciting to be excited about what's next for me.

My need for my own thing, a business separate from my husband's and home life pushed on me internally for a long time before the opportunity I saw in continuing the Body Time products.  Early on I felt excited and overwhelmed by the business idea, building a website, packaging etc.  As this became a real business, I learned more about promoting online sales, social media, email.  The biggest challenge for me, far and away, has been how to confidently talk to my people, mostly women, mostly my age or a little older. 

I do like writing here.

I do like writing emails a little less, because I am always unsure how much people want to hear from me personally.  I first started talking in my real person voice in emails right as the pandemic hit, to mixed reviews.  

I really don't do a good job at social media.  I have been consistent before with no real plan, right now I am consistently absent!  I have hired help twice and not liked what happened.  Room for improvement.

I have some plans for the new year and hope to improve on this challenging part of the business, but will continue to blog here, so if you like this, look for overshare links.

I am working on a catalog, I want to offer it too!  I was hoping to get this done early in the year, but I'm now not sure. There are developments in my life that have made any new things feel uncertain and my priorities shifted. 

A week ago today my father died.  He was 84 and in not great health. He had been stable in his condition, his sudden passing was a surprise.  There is a long, life-long, hard story of family estrangement in my family of origin and I had not had contact with my parents in close to a decade.  My generation has been trained to not talk about this sort of personal thing, and so my heart beats quickly typing just this limited information.  I won't say much more, but will share that the news has opened up a flood gate of things I didn't expect. It seems like there are opportunities here for reconnection and healing with my mother and some siblings that I honestly never, ever expected.  It's all bittersweet.

I have shared a little about my personal experience with mental/emotional lows and can say with confidence that my tendency for these struggles are a genetic vulnerability.  The vast majority of the rough times I've had are related to my familial situation.  I never expected that to shift much, and I am a changed  person today simply by seeing a pathway to reconnection to people I thought were lost forever to me.  

The point is, heading into the new year, I am currently living through something that I had never allowed myself to imagine could be possible.

The photo is of my beautiful mom, who just lost her husband of 66 years.

xo~lynn