Where do I begin?

It’s been 4 months since my last post but man does it feel like a lifetime.

Soo much has happened since then… I’ll do my best to give you the short version.

When we last chatted, I was hard at work on improving my sleep and overall wellness, and you know what? I was doing SO WELL!

Like “better than I’ve ever felt in my adult life” well.

It was kind of unbelievable, but it also felt surprisingly sustainable and that was a big deal!

Then work kicked into high gear and I kind of lost my footing.

Not terribly, just in an “okay I have to figure this out” kind of way… and I did, a little.

But when I tell you… this spring season was unexpectedly one of the busiest I’ve ever had? Whew. I was absolutely grateful, but man was it a challenge.

Previously during a busy season, I would just keep pushing and then figure out recovery afterwards. But re-learning how to take care of myself in a healthier way meant that I needed to do things differently.

And while I was working on regaining my footing, along came a sinus infection. Literally in the middle of the busy season 😒

Discouraged is not even the word. I had reschedules on top of reschedules!

I was down for a couple weeks, but thankfully I was (mostly) better in time for my week long Midwest work trip.

The work trip!

So… I’ve actually never done a trip like this before. Usually if I’m traveling for work, it’s to one city. But given how amazing I felt earlier in the year (when these plans were made lol), I was like oh this is totally doable!

What were the plans? Flying to Grand Rapids for a shoot… then driving to Detroit for a few shoots… then driving to Fort Wayne for a shoot… then driving to Indianapolis to fly home.

A lot, I know lol. I had rest days in there and each of the drives were about 2 to 2.5 hours so that was no problem, but starting the trip on the heels of being sick (and at the start of that crazy heatwave!) was definitely a challenge.

Despite how challenging it was, there were definitely some blessings sprinkled in and I was so grateful to Jehovah for helping me get through! Even when my flight home was cancelled because of storms at home 😂

So that brings me to where things really fell apart…

The week after I got back, we had a really sudden and tragic loss.

We lost a vibrant and caring husband, friend, father, brother, and uncle in an instant. Honestly I can barely even talk about this without crying because losing Mike has been one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in a long time. He was such a dear friend to me (more like a big brother) and he will truly be missed.

I’ve been moving a bit slower and I’m grateful to my clients for their grace with the extra time I’ve needed lately.

So that’s the short-ish recap of the last 4 months.

I do have more to share- both photos and life stuff, but I’ll have to do that in a follow-up because I didn’t want this to be any longer!

Thanks for being here and catching up with me 🧡

-Danni