Recently, I’ve been grappling with an incredibly stressful situation: my Facebook account was disabled because a rogue Instagram account, which I don’t own, violated their terms of service. There is a growing number of people who have this problem, and Facebook doesn’t have a way to deal with it.
You see they send you to facebook.com/hacked, but since your account is disabled you can’t report it. So off to Instagram you go which does absolutely no good because the account that violated their terms doesn’t belong to you – a security problem with meta allows these accounts to hook to your facebook.
It’s Sarcoidosis Awareness Month, and I want to tell you what that means—especially because I have it.
Imagine your body is like a superhero team, always on guard to fight off germs and keep you healthy. But sometimes, that team gets confused and starts attacking parts of your own body by mistake. That’s what happens with sarcoidosis.
Sarcoidosis causes little clumps of angry cells called granulomas to pop up where they don’t belong—like in your lungs, eyes, skin, or other organs. These clumps can mess with how your body works. It’s kind of like having a bunch of tiny, uninvited guests show up and start causing trouble.
For me, it started with feeling tired. Not just a little tired—exhausted. I thought I was just busy or maybe a little out of shape. I didn’t want to go to the doctor because I felt embarrassed about gaining some weight and wanted to fix it myself first. But the truth is, I was really sick. I had become severely anemic and nearly died. I was in the hospital for seven days, and that’s when I finally got diagnosed with sarcoidosis.
Even after that, it hasn’t been easy. The treatments I tried, like prednisone, made me feel worse in some ways. It made me hungry, cranky, and messed with my blood sugar because I also have diabetes. It was scary and frustrating—especially when I was doing all the right things and still wasn’t getting better.
But once I started talking openly with my doctor, we found a treatment that helped. I still have tough days. Some days I look okay on the outside, but inside, my body feels like it’s been through a battle. And because sarcoidosis isn’t something people can see, they don’t always understand what you’re going through.
That’s why this month matters. It’s about helping people see what’s invisible—and reminding others to be kind, patient, and never judge someone by how they look.
Like my blog? My first three novels have been released! It’s set in a small, holiday obsessed town, and if you love Hallmark movies you’ll love this book series!
The first book in the series is called Going Home. Becca, our heroine, returns home after a 25 year absence to reclaim a sentimental family heirloom. She hopes to go in and out unnoticed, especially by the man she’s loved since she was eight years old.
If you’ve ever said “I’m fine” while holding back tears, this is for you.
We all know the drill. Someone asks how we’re doing, and without a second thought, we slap on a smile and say, “I’m fine.” Doesn’t matter if we just stubbed our toe, spilled coffee on ourselves, or are actively suppressing an emotional breakdown—“I’m fine” is the default response.
A friend of mine pointed this out to me one day. He told me, “You always say you’re fine, even when you’re obviously not. That’s just you.” And honestly? He was right. Even when I was exhausted, overwhelmed, or barely keeping it together, I still said I was fine. Because that’s what we do, right? Especially women. We keep moving. We take care of everyone else. We don’t want to be a burden.
Then my friend jokingly said, “You should make a shirt so that when you’re not fine, you can just wear it, and I’ll know.”And thus, my “I’m Fine” shirt was born.
It’s funny. It’s sarcastic. But it’s also way too real.
Let me start with a confession: I avoided going to the doctor because I gained weight. I knew something was wrong—I felt exhausted, weak, and just off—but instead of scheduling an appointment, I told myself, “Lose twenty pounds first, then go. You’ll feel better.” Spoiler alert: I didn’t feel better.
I felt worse. And worse. Until I ended up severely anemic and hospitalized for seven days. That’s when they diagnosed me with sarcoidosis. Looking back, I can’t help but think: If I had just gone to the doctor when I first started feeling bad, maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so serious.
Hello all you lovely people out there! I just wanted to give a quick update to my situation and let you know how everything is going.
Well, I can’t say it’s been the best. I’ve suffered some major healthy issues this last year, and to say it’s been a struggle is the understatement of the year. Hopefully we are on the right course now to getting me back to normal, or as close to normal as someone like me can be 🙂
Also, I published the 3rd book in my Snow Globe Cafe series! Fans of the series wanted an Emery/Alec book and here you have it! All three books are available for Kindle or paperback. You can find the series here.
I’m hoping to post more recipes soon! As you know I don’t post until I’ve made them 3 times with good results. I have a couple on deck that need one more try and up they’ll go! I can’t wait to share them with you!
I believe I’ve said before on here how getting and maintaining your goal weight does more than just improve your health and your self confidence.
All of a sudden you start realizing things you might have thought were impossible are now not do daunting. You kind of get your excuses taken away, and after a year of maintaining I wrote my first novel. Then I wrote my second novel. My third novel is at the editor right now. It’s amazing what can happen when you take the impossible away.
So now they have a new program that’s super cool. You write in “episodes”. I think for people that may not think they have time to read a book this is perfect!
My story on Vella is called Lucky Me. I have four episodes up right now, and you can read them all for free 🙂
The first three are free to read, and after that you use tokens. The good thing is Vella is giving everyone 200 tokens to start!
If you do check out my story, please leave a like (click the thumbs up at the end) after each episode and follow my story. It would really be helping me a lot!
Thanks again for all your support. I wouldn’t be anywhere near who I am today without all of you!
I haven’t had time to develop new recipes, much less make the ones that I have. Since the global pandemic hit I have been working between seventy and eighty hours a week.
If that wasn’t enough to deal with, I was also hit with the one two punch of losing a childhood friend. After you get past the age of twenty-five I think you realize how important these people are. You realize how rare they are and how they feel more like family then just a friend.
I am very fortunate because I still have several friends from my childhood. Sure, we may not see each other every day, but we keep in contact and when we do see each other it’s like no time has passed at all.
Losing even one is hard, incredibly hard. Not only do you lose a family member but you are reminded just how fragile and precious life really is. If you’ve followed my blog you know my initial weight gain was sparked by a series of deaths in my life. My Grandparents, my parents, and my animals all died in a rapid succession that left me clawing my way back up to the surface to be able to breathe.
You all rode along with me on my journey to get back a sense of normalcy and health and were such a big part of it. I was Wonder Woman. I would never fall again because I knew better now. I saw people who gained their weight back and thought rather arogantly, “that will never happen to me.”
I had cracked the code. I understood what I did and why I did it. I knew how much better my life was shedding all those pounds. Not because of my looks, but because how I felt. No more knee pain. No more struggling for breath if I walked up a couple flights of stairs. I could run around with my toddler nephews like I was 18 again.
Now even before the ‘rona hit I have to admit I had gained a bit back. Nothing unmanageable mind you but just a bit. Right before all this happened I was to the point that my cushion I had for weigh in at WW was gone and I might have to start paying this next month.
Then everything shut down.
No accountability.
I’ve never faired well with that. It’s something I need. I had started only weighing in once a month and was proud of myself for being able to do that.
No times a month proved to be very difficult, especially during a time when I didn’t have the time or energy to really be prepared. The key to my success was planning for success. I was great at properly preparing my meals on Sunday and being ready for the week.
It’s hard to prepare on Sunday when you are working 12 hours every Sunday, let me tell you.
I did start to come to my senses in July and decided my old habits had been creeping up on me and needed to be stopped. It started out innocently enough – just pick up something quick on my way home and not account for it because by the time I ate it was time for bed.
I had written down every single thing I ate for three years straight and it only took one death and a lot of work hours to destroy that habit. Amazing how that can happen, isn’t it?
So it was time to buckle down. It was time to pull myself up by my boot straps and get right. I was only about twenty pounds up at this point. Twenty pounds is nothing compared to sixty plus, right?
Then it happened again.
A good friend of mine was murdered this summer. They still haven’t caught the culprit and the police seem to be clueless as to what happened.
You see things like this all the time on the news, and you feel so sorry for those people going through something like that but much like when your parents die you cannot fathom what they are really going through until it happens to you.
I hope every single person reading this never has to go through something like that.
Needless to say death seems to be a trigger for me, and I’m assuming most people, so this has not been good. Not at all.
There was the recognition though. I realized what I was doing. At times I did make good choices because thankfully a lot of those are ingrained in my now.
I made a lot of bad choices too.
So in the middle of working a million hours a week at the day job and two horrific deaths I also was supposed to be turning in book three of my Snow Globe Café series.
It was just too much. Just to add a cherry to the top when WW centers starting opening again it was announced that mine would not be reopening, and the closest one was 10 miles of bumper to bumper traffic away from my old center. My leader who I adore only had one meeting or workshop or whatever the heck they call them now, at a time I couldn’t go.
Whether you are writing a recipe or a book it takes creativity. All these things, sometimes big things, sometimes little things zap it right out of you. Most of my work depends on it, so the funk I was in killed my performance.
So I started small. I knew I needed to at least start maintaining my weight before I slid down that slippery slope of gaining it all back.
Done.
Then I needed to at least try to get my book going. It brings me such joy to write. I love it and I love interacting with my fans. One thing I didn’t want to do was write complete garbage for them or for me, so I started doing research for another character that would be popping up in that book.
Low and behold while researching potters on YouTube I found something else to love. It sparked my creativity, was decently easy to learn, and has helped me climb out of this hole as I did before a couple of years ago.
It’s acrylic pouring, and I absolutely love it. I have begun writing again, and the juices are flowing for hopefully some new recipes for you all. I’ve decided that life is to short and have started insisting on days off at work. My mental health is more important than a corporation.
I’m not going to go into detail about my acrylic stuff but if you’d like to hear me ramble about how it has helped me the first video below goes into that.
The second one is just a short demo on a particular style with pleasant music instead of my ramblings 🙂
Enough about me. I feel like I’m in such a better place now and I can get through these latest challenges.
What about you? How have you been fairing during this global crisis? So many lives have been turned upside down. Are you all okay out there? For my followers that do WW, how has it impacted you? Did your WW Centers stay open?
Lastly, I’d just like to thank you all. Some of you have stuck with me for years, whether cheering me on or commiserating with me. Y’all are really the best. You know that, right?
To keep up with me:
Follow my blog with the link in the left hand side bar (or bottom of the page if on cell).
Like my blog? My first and second novels have been released! It’s set in a small, holiday obsessed town, and if you love Hallmark movies you’ll love this book series!
The first book in the series is called Going Home. Becca, our heroine, returns home after a 25 year absence to reclaim a sentimental family heirloom. She hopes to go in and out unnoticed, especially by the man she’s loved since she was eight years old.
The odds are stacked against Becca, small towns being what they are. Her 25 year old secret is about to be exposed, and she just might get a second chance at love.
We are living in crazy scary times. I felt compelled to do something, even if it was small, to help people under quarantine.
As an essential worker I haven’t been safe in my house, but I know after about two days I would be losing my mind. So I thought about what I could do to help those of you who are.
The biggest thing I could think of would be to help make the time go by and entertain you. I’ve decided to make my first novel free. Honestly it’s been free all week, but I wrote this four days ago and didn’t hit publish!
So I’m so sorry but this is only free until midnight tonight. If you like to read, give it a whirl!
Happy New Year! Many people will wake up today with the will to make changes in their life. A week from now, many people will have already given up on that idea. Go to any gym this week and then again in February and you’ll see what I mean.
As most of you know I do WW. January means a flood people, vibrating with excitement for their new journey. Those of us legacy WW’s know to get there early if you want a seat at the meeting, or workshop as they are now called. By February you can jump out of bed at the last minute and have no problem finding a seat.
Why do so many people fail? How can people with so much enthusiasm, excitement, and hope just quit? We’ve all been there. We’ve all steeled ourselves with determination, just knowing this year will be the year we reach our goals.
I love holidays. My parents were about the biggest holiday freaks you could ever meet, so you could say it’s in my DNA. No matter what else was going on with life they always made holidays special and fun.
Since we are coming off the biggest eating day of the year I had a huge reason to be thankful this year. Thankful that WW decided to give us our old program back!
Yes!
If you are a regular reader of my blog, I’m sure you’ve caught the hint that I HATED IT when they changed last year. In the past when WW made a significant change I always fell off the wagon, and ended up quitting.
Thankfully this didn’t happen this time, but it did get me out of the very habits I formed to keep my weight off for 2 + years. The new program gave to much freedom for someone like me, and I found my portion sizes getting bigger and documenting my food happening less and less.
For me those were the two keys things that kept me in line, and with so many things like eggs and chicken being free I found myself toeing that goal weight line, going over for the first time in over two years.
This blog has many followers, and they aren’t all WW. WW isn’t going to work for everyone, and it is important to find what works for you. This new program didn’t work for me, and I tried y’all. I really did.
Then life hit.
It hit hard.
I know you all realize my blog has been sorely neglected. It wasn’t because I had gained weight. I documented that here.
My job became more demanding, just as I was releasing my first novel. I was sent out of town for a week and that turned into three months. I was working between 70-80 hours a week while trying desperately to meet the deadline for my second novel while keeping my household running from four hours away.
The only thing that kept me from gaining back every one of those sixty-some-odd pounds were the things I learned with the first program. I’ve had a death grip on the back of the wagon for the last six months, and for the first time I feel like I can pull myself up and back on it.
I’ve made some decisions that should make it easier. Even though work is still crazy, I’m taking at least one day off each week. There is a light at the end of the tunnel to this crazy work schedule, but I’m not doing it anymore.
As women we are trained early on to take care of people and be dependable. Unfortunately many of those lessons don’t include taking care of our self.
I’m teaching myself that lesson right now, and it’s time I put myself and my needs first.
I can’t go back to where I was.
It’s different, starting to lose your grip on your new healthy lifestyle once you’ve achieved your goal. Before when I’d slip, I didn’t really have the belief that I would ever do it. Falling back into old habits and gaining the weight usually came with a vengeance, because that’s exactly what I expected to happen all along.
Not anymore.
I know I can do it. I know I can do hard things.
The biggest thing I know is my weight is not the end all be all story of my life. So if life gets in the way and I get a little chubby, it’s not the end of the world. Sure, I will always work on staying near my goal weight – not for the old reasons I used to have like how I look, but because I feel totally amazing health wise at that weight.
I felt better than I did when I was in my twenties, and to tell you the truth I feel like I’m about 90 right now.
No regrets though, right? There was a lot of good this year. The first two books in my Snow Globe Café series have been well received, and I’ve sold more than I ever thought I could. I know a big part of that happened because of you, my dear readers, for spreading the word, and I will forever be thankful.
My 30 Point Life 