Hello and welcome to 2024!

And welcome to February. Any one else feel as if they blinked and January disappeared?

I actually had planned to write this blog earlier in the month but I’ve struggled to get all my words out in the way that I want until now.

For those of you that know me, even a little, you’re probably aware I normally don’t have a problem expressing my feelings but writing this particular blog feels much more personal and revealing. You see, the issue is and always has been that yes I can usually express my feelings but I also gloss over and disguise a lot of them. Many many of them. I’m sure lots of you can relate. I’m a natural carer and confidante and tend to put others feelings before my own, a trick I learnt as a very young child surviving in a chaotic family. It’s also because I genuinely care for others. All my life, people have come to me for advice, to unburden their problems, knowing I will not only listen but that I’m a great secret-keeper. (Another trick/coping tool learnt as a youngster). However, that generally means my own emotions often get suppressed. And they were. It was armour for me in many ways. If that sounds like I had a tough childhood then yes, I did but that’s a story for another blog. (If you ever wanna hear about it, that is).

I wanted this first blog of the year to be a reflective one as I’ve been doing exactly that lately – reflecting on the past couple of years and how much things have changed ever since the craziness that was the pandemic began and how we have travelled along since then. It quite literally shook up the world and as a society, we certainly didn’t bounce back easily from it. As we shouldn’t – the loss of life was horrendous, the side effects confronting and challenging. For myself, it was exactly that and more. I found myself reacting in ways I would never have anticipated – one of which was “Writers Block” so severe that it debilitated my “voice” and self confidence, eventually manifesting in my mind and body. As someone with chronic long term health issues, I didn’t actually recognise what was happening to me until long after my recovery from it. There were just so many issues happening simultaneously that I only had the clarity of mind to focus on one thing at a time. It took hindsight to look back and see that along with the pandemic, there were other events contributing to where I was emotionally, creatively, spiritually and mentally. And the recognition of it all began when a question floated through my mind quietly one day……

What do you do when the weight of nothing outweighs the weight of expectation?

Kind of a “heavy” thought, right?

I don’t mean simply the expectation of others about you but your expectations for yourself?? When “nothing” weighs down on you so heavily and insistently that you feel as though your knees will buckle? When there’s no motivation or inspiration inside and you feel hollowed out? When you’re afraid something in your soul has broken because you used to cry or laugh so easily at TV ads and movies but now you feel nothing? Now you just feel “meh” – disconnected and foggy and somehow missing. It was a truly frightening way to be and I kept it hidden from everyone. Family and friends – no one knew.

No one.

I’ve always said I’m Oscar-worthy.

For the longest time, I blamed it all on a variety of things – the failure of my books to be translated properly (more on that in a moment), being ripped off financially by a book promoter, ongoing health issues that drained all of my energy, the physical pain that is a daily struggle, family issues, etc etc. I dreaded and resented the business side of being an author, the constant promotion that took up so much time and energy, draining any and all joy and fun that writing gave me. I disliked it so intensely that I slowly stopped doing it and I was angry. So very angry – pissed that my hopes for how I’d wanted my writing career to progress had been thwarted; stifled by contract problems and my own inability to break through the brain-mud. I blamed all of these for my emotional turmoil, not realising that yes, it was all those but there was much more to it.

I felt guilty too – I’d let so many people down, people that were waiting for my third book and here I was, struggling to put any words on paper, let alone a chapter or two. The guilt was like a noose around my neck and I felt every inch of its tightening pressure. Sleep was but a memory, my physical body came up with weird ways to be ill and I was praying to all of the Angels and God and the Universe to help me. If you’re thinking this sounds like depression, you’re right. I’ve been clinically depressed for several years now, long before I began any kind of writing. (And that there is a massive admission for me to make to the world. Very few people knew. ) However, this mental place I was now in was new and far different to my normal way of being. Whenever I tried to write, I literally hated what I wrote because it didn’t sound like me, my voice or my way of writing. It felt like a stranger’s and so I just………stopped. It became too much. I quit trying to write and quit trying to nitpick all my issues and let it go.

As my beloved baby-niece’s favourite character, Elsa says…..let it go.

I can’t really pinpoint the specific moment I made the change or even the decision – I just kinda did it. I succumbed to the idea that my author voice was gone and I would leave it to the universe to lead me where it wanted me to go. I went into a sort of mourning, quietly and alone, for “what could have been”. Intellectually I knew the contractual problems were just one part of my sadness. Somewhere deep inside I knew there was more to it. Reading back on some of my previous blog posts now, the excitement and joy I felt at that stage leaps through the page. I was so thrilled whenever I had something new to report, such as my quest for foreign language translations. Oh boy, just the idea of that was mind blowing to me. Little did I know that it would become an exercise in disastrous futility.

I mistakenly and naively thought it would be a simple process. The translation company I had found (they shall remain nameless in this post), made it seem that way. But it was far from simple. I began working with French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese translators and soon found that every submission from them was ridiculously off. Translating is obviously never going to be “word for word exact” but these were coming back to me with a completely different feel to my characters and to their thoughts and words; changing them so drastically as to be unrecognisable which greatly disturbed and offended me. Some translations were laughable and I mean a real LOL. It happened countless times and every time I requested a correction, despite my guidance they still didn’t “get it”. They didn’t understand how I wrote or how my characters should sound. Emails flew back and forth for months and months on end, progressively getting more complicated and frustrating until eventually I had to refuse to work with them anymore as what they’d done was completely unacceptable. Basically I threw my hands in the air in defeat and shoved it all into a dark corner in my life – resigned to the fact that I’d wasted a good couple of years on this project. And worst of all – that I was stuck in a contract with them for the time being. You can imagine my devastation.

However, one language that was salvaged was Portuguese and that’s because I have a beautiful author friend who translated it all for me correctly and retained the feel of my characters and story. She was the only person I trusted with my words. One day, after the contract issues are sorted out with the Company, I am hoping to release this translated version and honour my friend with an acknowledgement of her hard work on my stories. The only way that I was able to honour her in the meantime was to edit her novel when she asked as English is not her first language and mine is. Please do check out her work. (Link: https://a.co/d/9QF3O2Y)

She deserves so much respect and reward for her generosity and effort. She has and always will have my utmost gratitude.

So, that was just one of the situations that dragged me into this awful drudge that masqueraded as my mind during this period. No writing therefore also meant no blogging……I mean, what was I going to blog about? I had no book news to tell, nothing was happening. I was lost and so tired.

Have you ever felt that way in life? It’s ugly and feels like quicksand, like your feet just can’t stay sturdy underneath you. I felt betrayed by my own self. Why was this happening? Yes, loads of things had gone wrong and become stagnant in my writing “career” but where did my old self go? The one that would persevere no matter what, that would get back up if knocked down, even if it was painfully slow? Where did she go?

I couldn’t find her at that point.

Letting go of anything has never been easy for me as I tend to be stubborn and persistent but I did it eventually. My sanity insisted on it.

Then a funny thing happened.

The more I let go, the more answers and solutions came to me. And they came in odd ways – through intense dramatic dreams; through studied focus on other interests and hobbies that suddenly leapt back to life within me. Through relevant information just randomly landing in front of my eyes, as if divinely placed. Through following my instincts. Through analysis. And most profoundly of all – through recognising that all I needed to do was trust the Universe, the Angels and my own intuition – if I followed those, then all will be well.

When I started paying attention to my intuition, it told me I needed to step back and look at the bigger picture of my situation. That I was using the analytical side of myself too much and I needed to go with the flow, to look internally. Even my tarot cards were yelling at me to see things from a new perspective. (The Hanged Man card kept popping up every single time I did a reading).

Thankfully, once I took that advice, several things happened that brought me the clarity I was searching for. My psychiatrist (yes, I have one, sadly) confirmed that my symptoms sounded very much like a side effect to the medication I was on – that it tends to muffle one’s emotions and bring on a kind of fog, as if one is wrapped in a cotton ball. Yikes!! So, coping mechanisms were instigated and it’s making a difference. Still a work in progress but time will heal.

Secondly, through much research and study, I had it confirmed that I was an Empath – something I’ve always “kind of” known about myself but never fully understood. Certainly I didn’t understand how it affected me personally – how the energies around me have a big impact in how I’m feeling. And I didn’t know how to protect myself from that energy. (Learning now and so it’s another work in progress)

Turns out the massive shift in energy that Earth is currently going through is impacting a great many of us humans, including the empaths of the world. And the older I get, the more sensitive I’ve become to it. (I recently discovered there’s a numerological reason for this change in me and it made so much sense when I found out – an enormous relief.)

I’ve always been interested in things of the “other” world such as psychics, tarot, crystals, numerology, dream interpretation, etc, etc and over the years, my own abilities have grown as I’ve studied and allowed my natural intuition to grow. Learning how to unblock it hasn’t been a simple task because I grew up in a family that didn’t really encourage me and my odd ways. I was and still am the Black Sheep of the family…..the one that’s different from the rest…..anyone relate to that? I’m also the middle daughter. And so, I didn’t really consider my interests and instincts to be anything more than a hobby. But I’ve come to realise it’s more than that. It’s who I am and the more I let her out, the better I feel. The more I let her breathe, the freer I feel. Such a pity that I had suppressed her for so long but I now know that’s just how it was meant to go.

Thirdly, from nowhere came this crazy urge to do crafting again. I used to do ceramics class about 30 years ago and the occasional bit of painting here and there but all of a sudden, I found myself doing crafts of all kinds, spurred on by the need to fix a broken vase which then became a need to fix this and create that and oh, let’s paint these rocks and what can I make from a blank piece of wood that was lying uselessly in the garage? It was so odd and came on out of the blue but I was all in and having fun again. I began making all sorts of random things, some far better and prettier than others and it was this that made me realise my creative side was NEEDING to express itself. That I was needing the enjoyment and fun of making something, making anything! I’d been stuck in a Word-Depletion Slump and Negative Energy Sludge for so long that my soul was crying. I needed to find my joy again, to find what makes me happy and it chose to burst out of me in a crafty way (pun intended).

Because that’s who I am. I’m not just a writer who had lost her voice. I was a blogger who wanted to blog about more than my books and characters. I wanted to blog about stuff that happened to me, subjects that interested me. I was a crafter, a painter, a tarot card reader, a numerologist, an empath. A reader, a cat lover, a counsellor, a mother and friend. I was all of those things and much more.

When I began writing my first book, I was told by the publishing company to start a blog and to stick to blogging about books because that’s all that readers would want to know about. I was told to not express controversial opinions of world matters or politics or humanity. To stick to “just book stuff” and leave my personal likes and dislikes out of the public eye. But now I know that advice was wrong. I think people who read my books would want to know more about me and my other interests and opinions, right? Stephen King expresses his opinion all over Twitter and he doesn’t stress about it so why should I? Lol.

Mind you, that’s another thing that contributed to my emotional troubles – the negative impact of excessive social media as a whole. I was paying far too much attention to all the bad stuff going on in the world and it was literally tearing my empathic self to shreds daily. The injustice and cruelty of world events and leaders. The utter BS of certain people in the media spotlight that would rile me up so badly, my stomach would churn. This daily feed of such awful-ness, the sheer unfairness of it all became a poison to my existence and it took a long time to wake up to this fact. Now I limit my exposure to it and I’m far healthier for it. Fair warning though – in future I may express opinions you don’t like but that’s okay….we can’t all be the same.

So, what was the purpose of disclosing all of this to you?

It was to explain where I’d disappeared to and why. It was to reveal myself as the frail human that I am. And it was to showcase that even when you reach the point of letting go, when you reach a spiritual and emotional rock bottom, as I did, that you can still work your way out of that hard place. Whether it’s through gritting your teeth and forcing your way back or whether it’s doing an Elsa and letting it go, leaving it to the Universe and the Angels to lead you where you should go or whether it’s some other way – just go with it. Because there is a path out of the quagmire. There are reasons why you feel the way you do and eventually, with some time, understanding and trust, all will be revealed to you and you can move on. It’s also to encourage you to honour all sides of your self, to let them out and be free.

So here I am, 2024 has begun and I’m ready for the change in me to continue its seismic shaking. I’m ready to say that yes, I will be continuing my Unbreakable Series but I’m also doing more than that and if any of you are interested in discovering the other sides of me , do let me know…..maybe I can incorporate some of that here. I’m not entirely sure how so I’m open to ideas and suggestions.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking I’m way overdue to run another Giveaway……what you think, guys?

Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Much love,

Zelly

PS. For those wondering about the painted rocks and wooden board ….. here’s a couple of the crafty things I’ve been making……