January 28, 2025
It’s nearly 3:00 am…I can’t sleep. This happens every now and then. I often say I have too many tabs open in my brain. “Did I clean the cat box? I should dump the bathroom garbage. Tomorrow I’ll try and make time to hang those new photo frames I got…wait, did I print the photos? I should go through my closet. I can’t wait until spring so I can open the windows and smell the fresh air coming in. Oopsie…I should change the furnace filter.” I could go on and on…but that’s a rabbit hole we don’t need to go down right now.
I don’t remember always being this way…feeling scatter-brained and hanging on by a thread some days…but this is grief brain. I have always felt my mind going 100 mph, but most thoughts could be swept off to the side until morning. Now I find myself waking up with a head full of thoughts…all of which could wait until morning…but I worry I’ll forget half of them. Maybe I should keep a pad of paper next to my bed. Do you ever feel this way?
I’m in my third semester of college…and when I began this journey in the Fall of 2023, I would stay up until 3:00 am doing homework…go to sleep for a few hours, get up and go to work, run errands, spend time with my girls and pets, do class and more homework. A cycle that worked…but it didn’t need to be that way. I wasn’t so overloaded with school and life that I needed to stay up that late, but it was exciting, and fun…and it kept me busy.
Now fast forward to today…I love sleep again. I have found a balance that works for me…until nights like tonight when I’m up at 3:00 am. Tonight it’s different. The thing keeping me awake, rattling around in my head, and giving me a natural, caffeine-less buzz…it’s my birthday. I have been working on this site for a month, and I set a deadline for myself that I would launch it on my birthday.
To be honest, it’s been nearly done for a couple of weeks. I decided to wait until my personal deadline as a gift to myself. When I took the leap and decided to go to college, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be here, right now, not only ready to launch my own website…but ready to launch my own Grief Coaching practice.
Well…here I am. It’s 3:00 am on January 28th, 2025. I sit here with love in my heart and a prayer on my mind, that one day I will have the opportunity to help one person find hope in the middle of their darkness.
Talk to you soon,
Connie
Branches of Hope 