As a child I always loved summer vacation. To leave school and stay home all day.

But once I hit my teens, summers were agonizing.

I had moved to a different house and I didn't like it. There was no creek to walk to. No buckeye trees to climb no easy trails to bike. It wasn't home.

It took time get normal back. It took almost six years. The first five was filled with so much confusion, sadness, borderline depression, and bad coping mechanisms. All of this happened in the summer because school was an amazing distraction.

But I have learned. My old house is really my place of childhood. The place where the little girls who made up songs with her friend about tacos, and imagined up fantastic pirate worlds and learned how to be happy. All of this during the summer.

My new house is where I learned how to handle sadness, how to handle the times when you just want everything to stop and pause. My new house is where I learned to find hope. All of this during the summer.

Life is full if old house summers where there isn't a care in the world, and everything is seen through rose colored glasses. Life is also full of new house summers when life smacks you like a brick wall and you have to learn how to cope with it in a healthy way.

I suppose I needed the new house summers to grow and to learn about myself and the old house summer memories to give me hope for those rose colored days again.

Part of the reason for this is because I need to get things off my mind and to kind of help you in a way. I have these moments when I just want to gather every hurting person in a blanket cocoon, hug them and say, "It's going to be okay. I love you so much, you are so special.". There were times when I just wanted someone to hug me for no reason and truly ask how I was doing. I wanted to know that people actually thought about me.

So, right now, I want you to curl up nice and cozy in a blanket cocoon with some fuzzy fluffball (preferably something domesticated) and know that you are loved and that you are more precious and valuable than all of the riches in the world. ❤️