Life Updates ⟡ Recent Contemplations ⟡ July 2025

 Hello again friends!

(a note before starting - I legitimately didn't know what day it was and thought I had missed my usual Wednesday post. It turns out, I'm right on schedule and not late at all, LOL! Though I do expect to be off schedule here and there in the coming months. Read on to see why...)

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If you have been reading the blog for awhile, you might have noticed I tend to have a schedule of posting on Wednesdays! I like having a routine when I can, for most things in life. It helps me take the guesswork out of when to get what things done to make sure I do all that I want to do!

My blogging desk setup!

 ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ An Interruption of Your Regularly Scheduled Posts  ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

This past Wednesday, however, was an exception. I was a bit "under the weather", shall we say. Not the usual way you might think though. I wasn't SICK sick... I was actually pregnancy sick! 

That's right, our little family is expanding. I am in fact pregnant with our second child!

My husband and I have been expecting this for a few months now. I was worried at first, because with my first son, I got pregnant right away when we started trying to conceive. But this time, it took just a few months. I was worried perhaps I was cut open wrong with my C Section and was preventing a new pregnancy. (Believe me, up until we got pregnant, the possibility/worry of that was very real for me. Especially considering how terrible my birth experience was with my son, and how everything was handled by the medical staff around me. But, that is a story for another post perhaps some day ... )

And as mentioned above, I have been feeling the sickness recently. It set in around 4 weeks. I won't directly share how far along I am for privacy reasons - but I'll just say come springtime I will have a new little baby to love. 

It's shaped like a <3

 ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ Tummy Aches Are Fun ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

Thankfully, the nausea is not terrible, and can be managed. As long as I eat very regularly, and make sure I don't get hungry, I can control how I feel. Which of course, isn't always possible. Sometimes it's too difficult to time it right, and I end up hungry and nauseous. In addition to the morning time, of course I have not eaten all night and can't really help that. So most mornings I wake up nauseous and then the nausea makes it hard to eat food for breakfast. It's really a mental battle getting breakfast down every day! But, once I can finally get down some food, I feel good for the next several hours. 

Outside of my Home Depot store taken Summer 2025

 ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ Supplements Are Somewhat Helpful ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

Additionally something that helps the nausea, that I discovered with my first pregnancy (with my son), is taking Vitamin B6. Especially before bed, during dinner or my last snack of the day. I have noticed a significant improvement in my overall tummy feeling the next day when I remember to take it! 

I also take Folate since it's one of the most essential vitamins for early pregnancy, and with my tummy issues it's really hard to eat enough in my diet on a daily basis. Of course, I still try. But I also take the folate. 

Other than that, I haven't been taking anything - I really try hard to avoid Tylenol, since I have read that recent studies suggest that Tylenol consumed during pregnancy can lead to higher risks of (I believe) ADHD and/or Autism in the child (I can't remember which on it is but it could also be both). I did however have such a bad headache recently that Tylenol was the only thing that pulled me through! 

Iced Earl Gray Tea from Course Coffee Roasters!

 ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ Other Life Tidbits ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

Besides the pregnancy, life has been a season of adjustments recently. Obviously pregnancy is a huge adjustment, especially with all the physical symptoms that come with it (I have had others besides the nauseous tummy, believe me). But life in general for me has been an adjustment for the last several months. 

Mainly the big change of me quitting my full time job in May to be home with my son. There have been many ups and downs since making that decision. 

1. Positive: More time with my son and time to play and develop

2. Negative: We only have one car, which my husband takes to work. Unfortunately his job is too far away from our home at the moment for me to realistically drop him off to keep the car very often at all. 

3. Negative: Having no car means being "stuck" at home, isolated. Similar to the above-mentioned mental battle of having to eat food with a nauseous tummy after a full night sleep on an empty stomach, so too is it a mental battle of keeping my spirits above water when I am stuck at home with no way to leave, all day, with a toddler (whom I love very much. But still). This has caused me to go into a bit of a depression due to the loneliness.

4. Positive: More time to do things I need to do around the house, like chores and food prep/cooking.

With the struggles above, I have not lost hope. Sure, plenty of days I feel hopeless. But I have not fully lost hope, I know that everything is a season, and nothing lasts forever. I have been in many seasons so far in my life, and one thing is for certain - GOD has not forgotten about me. He has not yet let me down, I just get impatient. But I believe and want to slow down and let a season exist instead of just wanting it to be over while being frustrated. Sure, many things about this season are frustrating. But I know He hears me. He tells me so, in little ways. He is always confirming His presence in my life. 

Somewhere, way up there

 ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ Other Struggles & Opportunities to Seek God's Will ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

One of the frustrations I have had with this seasons is with friendships. I, like many, have experienced friends both come and go in life. Some people are meant to be around for a long time and some only for a short while. I can understand that. But it's been especially difficult to grasp God's design for friendship as something I understand when I have lost 2 major friendships in the past 2 years. The situations were entirely separate from each other, and both caused by normal happenings caused by life shifts. But, they dampened my spirits about friendship. And left me wondering lots of things that I realized I didn't know:

• What does it mean to "be a good friend", according to the Lord? 
• How can I be a better friend to those around me? 
• What boundaries should I have for the people in my life? 
• What expectations should I have for my friends, and acquaintances? 
• How much effort is the right amount of effort to put into a person that I want to be friends with? 
• How much effort should I reasonably expect back from the person I'm putting effort into?
• How can I not take friendships ending personally, but instead maturely and with wisdom? 

And many more. 

It's been an area that I have felt convicted to seek the Lord on. I know SOME things about friendship that are directly quoted in Scripture off the top of my head. But I want to go deeper. I don't necessarily understand how the concept of those verses, and even the concept of Christ's work directly applies to my personal encounters with people. So, I'd like to find a few books on the subject and seek the Lord in prayer as I meditate on verses on the subject as well. 

I did this same thing recently with the concept of Forgiveness and it helped me immensely! 

Perhaps, depending on how I feel in the coming months of pregnancy, I will post about my discoveries and developments on the subject as way to perhaps stay accountable and committed to the mission.

Coloring while at Course Coffee Roasters

That is all I have for now, friends. I will try to post regularly, and even on my usual Wednesdays, when I can. I know that life will continue to shift as I get farther along in the pregnancy, and I may not feel up to doing everything I really want to. 

But have no fear, I am here. In the background of this blog, living life! You, reader, just don't know it! I will post when I can.

Until next time... 

~ Amaris // ☆

pictures from a day // (From my Old Blog Post Drafts)

(Starting from 2025): 

Hello Friends!

This is one of the old posts in my drafts that has been sitting gathering digital dust for years! It was fully written and edited years ago, so I decided to just post it. 

2019 was a fun year where I just started to feel like an adult (I was 21, but due to my sheltered upbringing, I didn't really "feel" adult like until 2019 onward). In any case, this is one of those good memories from before the pandemic craziness that I got good pictures of, edited by VSCO! I hope you enjoy -

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Location : Main Street, St. Charles, MO
Day : Sunday, August 4th, 2019
Company : My sister

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A worn brick wall //

My sister always likes this particular wall, so depending on what she's wearing, we will take pictures whenever we come here.

Hanging Plants //

The window was too aesthetic to pass up :3

Coffee //

Our blended coffees were melting pretty fast so we could've just gotten iced coffees and there wouldn't have been a difference *shrug*

Chandelier //

Upstairs at one of the vintage shops, the attic was all decorated with old lighting, old bed frames, and old looking wallpaper. It was also super hot up there.

Bookshelf //

It smelled really good and old and papery right here. :3

Mirror //

Another one of the many cute shops on that street.

Plants //

"Wait, stop right there, let me get a pic the plants are really pretty..."

Aquarius //

The embroidery was really cute. They had all the signs, including this Aquarius which is my sign (p.s. I don't do horoscope or anything like that fyi... I just like stars and constellations. :3).

Hello? //

We found a rotary phone in an antique shop. We tried to call mom but it didn't work.

That's all. I just wanted to share a few pics from our day.
Hope you guys are doing good.

~ Amaris // ☆

Coffee

When I was a teenager (through most of the 2010s), I saw coffee as one two things:

1) The sweet kind of coffee drinks for basic white girls

2) The black coffee for working blue collar people and, like, i don't know, farmers and truck drivers.

Based on my experience, the coffee from the second group didn't taste too good. I had had a sip of it here and there, but never thought much of it, or just thought it was icky. My mom sometimes talked about this coffee, and how she "needed the caffeine to get through the day". So I supposed at the time it was some kind of magic energy pill drink that helped you get by when you had gotten less than ideal amount of sleep the night before.

In my late teens/early 20s, I sorta started falling into the first category. 

Like any teen fresh outta childhood, I liked a good sweet treat that had the "grown up" feeling because there was coffee in it. 

So, I went to a few Starbucks, had a few Frappuccino's. I kind of WAS a basic white girl for awhile... I'll post a pic to prove it... (The drink in this photo doesn't even have "coffee" in it...)

... the only thing missing was a T Swift obsession (who I disliked then and even more now, LOL) - I was in Chesterfield MO here. 

Picasso's coffee was a staple locally owned coffee shop in Saint Charles (near where I lived in Hazelwood at the time) and so I would sometimes go there, because hey! They had the popular icy blended drinks too - but their own version. I didn't care so much that they were locally made, I just thought it was something different than Starbucks to have sometimes. 

Additionally, I didn't go out of my way to MAKE any coffee ever. I didn't have a coffee machine (I think we HAD one, in the household, but it was just a typical drip Mr. Coffee maker that the family could use. I may have used it once or twice but it wasn't a ritual for me), and I didn't have any other contraption to make coffee. Heck, I didn't even know there existed different contraptions to make coffee. 

Here I am at Picasso's, on Christmas Eve 2018... drinking my frozen drink IN THE WINTER XD

In other words, there was black coffee, but it was mostly yucky. And then there were milkshake-like "coffee" drinks that somehow had coffee in it, and because of all the flavorings and sweeteners, it didn't taste quite so yucky. So when I DID get coffee, this is the type I would get. 

That was the entire scope of my coffee understanding as of 2020!

And then..... 2021 happened. 

And everything changed. 

It started when I was hanging out this with this guy who was my friend. He had recently started experimenting with his coffee tastes before meeting me. He and I did lots of things together (not as dates... but as friends. But believe me, we did get questioned XD). We started hanging out to go on walks, and we also enjoyed studying scripture together. And what better place to study scripture than coffee shops? 

So one day in April of 2021, he takes me to Upshot Coffee Brake Shop in St. Charles. 

At Upshot, during one of our early studies. You can even see his bible open in the background. We were just friends and, unknowingly, had started on the adventure of a lifetime.

And I had my first SPECIALTY, well-made latte ever. When I tell you, my world was changed. It was from that first sip that I finally understood - that coffee was not all that I had supposed it was. That coffee was not as limited a concept as I thought it was. There were possibilities here. There was... how shall I say it, flavor. 

GOOD flavor. 

My friend and I continued to hang out. We went to other coffee shops too. I discovered that black coffee, when actually brewed well, actually TASTED good. Frequent words used to describe black coffee that I had heard and also used myself, such as "burnt tasting", "bitter", "dirty", no longer applied. 

At Upshot. One of our many coffee scripture studies together. Building a foundation of scripture for our marriage - and a love for good coffee!

When brewed correctly, I now knew new words to describe the many different notes that can be found in different regions of coffee - "chocolate", "berry", "citrus", "oat", "nuts", "toffee", "jasmine", "raspberry", "caramel", "smoke", "herbs", "date", "cherry", etc., you name it!

And I even further learned, that it did not just matter how it was brewed, but also how it was sourced, WHERE in the world it was sourced, and also HOW it was roasted.

Basically, I learned that every single step of bringing coffee to the cup makes a difference in how it will taste. 

At Course Coffee Roasters. This is a cortado with sparkling water.

From the region it was grown in, to the temperature used to brew, to how LONG you wait to consume it AFTER it was brewed... EVERYTHING makes a difference. 

So it was no longer a wonder for me that there are so many coffee cups out there that frankly taste disgusting because they don't get it right on just ONE (or more) of those levels!

I know I am sounding like a total cringe-y millennial know-it-all coffee hipster. But when you think about the complexity. All the layers. All the expertise. There are so many ways you can get coffee "wrong". But when you get it all RIGHT... you get something truly beautiful and at the least, eye opening. 

This is at Quarrelsome Coffee, in 2023-ish (they have since sadly closed) with a pastry they sourced from Knead Bakehouse

But let's get back to my story. Me and this guy (who, I'll just spoil the story for you, did end up dating me later in the Summer of 2021, and yes, we eventually got married, and yes, he is the one I call my husband now!) continued to visit coffee shops because we both realized that our understanding of the subject was beginning to broaden in ways we hadn't imagined before. 

At Upshot, in Summer of 2021. With Cody!

You could really call this the "golden age of coffee" for me and Cody. 

We were trying new places and developing our palates for the stuff. And through it all, we were growing close the Lord and close to each other, even falling in love. 

At Course Coffee Roasters - shortly after we started officially dating, Summer 2021

It was in the Summer of 2021 that we discovered the coffee shop that would become more dear to us than any others we had visited thus far, or any that we would visit after. The coffee shop that was so consistent with their coffee drinks, and was so hospitable in their kindness, that it became a second home to us of sorts.

As my relationship with my soon-to-be husband deepened, my troubled relationship with my own family began to deteriorate. GOD was pulling me one way, and my family another. Without going into the nitty gritty of it all, it got to the point where it was so bad that I needed to leave my own home. I lived in my fiance's basement for awhile, having nowhere else to go. 

On our wedding day at Course Coffee Roasters - April 2022. Photos by Mary Ann Prahlow

In those darkened days of Winter, 2021-2022, we found a place of solace and comfort in the seats of Course Coffee Roasters. 

We met there to continue getting to know each other, while praying and honestly stressing about the complexities of our situation. All the while, Course Coffee was a safe place when I didn't have a home, and didn't feel at home almost anywhere. 

At home at Course Coffee Roasters, St. Charles MO.

Finally, my fiance and I got a place of our own in March of 2022, just a month before our scheduled wedding. The stress of life and the stress of our family's situations started to ease. 

In April of 2022, we got married! It was joyful and happy, although scary and uncertain in other ways due to the family issues. 

On our wedding day, at Course Coffee Roasters (photos by Mary Ann Prahlow)

But aside - to honor Course Coffee, and because we just freaking loved the place and their coffee (and coffee in general) so much, we had our "first look" right outside the shop, and even had some pictures taken inside the shop.

Our wedding day, after our first look. At Course Coffee Roasters (photos by Mary Ann Prahlow)

For our honeymoon, instead of a "honeymoon", we decided to have a "Coffee Moon". 

We took two weeks off, and decided to go to as many coffee shops around the St. Louis and St. Charles area as we could. 

At Maypop Coffee & Garden Shop in Webster Groves, MO (a really nice neighborhood in our area!). This was taken during our Coffee Moon in 2022.

It was an absolute BLAST! If you are ever near St. Louis, believe me, you have GOT to visit some of them. There are so many wonderful shops here! We are quite the coffee scene, and for most of my life, I had no idea! 

The top contenders in this area are (as of now, and in my opinion):

• Sump Coffee (probably my top rec in the City)
• Goshen Coffee
• Course Coffee Roasters (obviously)
• Honorable Mention: Quarrelsome Coffee - they are closed now :( But they were one of the best in StL! 
• Maypop Coffee & Garden Shop
• Coma Coffee Roasters

Taken at Sump Coffee - probably my favorite coffee shop other than Course. Especially the interior decor and design! This was taken I believe 2021 or 2022.

 

Not surprisingly, when we had our first child, the first place we took him after coming home from the hospital, was Course Coffee. 

Cody the new dad - and Malachi the new son! in June 2023 at Course Coffee Roasters.

And, as all of my knowledge of good coffee evolved, of course my home brewing evolved as well. 

Currently we have a small espresso machine, a French press, and an Aeropress. I personally use the Aeropress every day for my home iced lattes (using beans from Course Coffee of course). 

I also frequently experiment with coffee syrups to add to my lattes. My current favorite is a syrup made with sugar, water, molasses, cardamom, cocoa powder, almond extract, vanilla extract, and cinnamon. It's quite delightful!

At Road Crew Coffee & Cycles during our Coffee Moon in 2022

While I mainly make iced lattes at home (and the occasional black coffee), my favorite go-tos to get out are:

• Traditional Cappuccino 
• Traditional Cortado
• Cold Brew
• Nitro Cold Brew
• Traditional Espresso Tonic

If you had told me in 2018 that my life would become so intertwined with the love and knowledge of coffee and my romance love story with my husband would be so involved with coffee, I would not have believed you. 

At Course Coffee Roasters - doing more Bible study. This was late 2021 early 2022 about.

It's something truly unique in my life, that I love both independently and with my husband together as well! I'm so glad that coffee is so much more to me than "icky black stuff" or "sickeningly sweet milkshake stuff". It has truly brought a richness and joy to my life that wouldn't be there otherwise. 

And the cool thing is too, that coffee is so many different things to different people! 

At Calvin Fletchers Coffee Company, which we stopped at on a road trip passing through Indianapolis, IN, in 2024. It was a worthy pit stop!

To the basic white girls, iced frozen sweet coffee is still something for them. Coffee is something for the trucker on the road at 5am. Coffee is something for breakfast, it's an after-dinner delight. It's an afternoon pick-me-up. Ther's something for dairy-free people and dairy-loving people. It's something for true coffee hipsters to brag about. It's something to the people of St. Charles who support their local shop. It's something to the people around the world where coffee is sourced, as a source of income for them. Heck, there's even something for non-caffeine drinkers, with decaf! It's a multi-faceted thing that means so much to so many. 

And for me, while my story is one among many, it just means a lot to me too.

Preparing for the birth of my son, March 2022 at Course Coffee Roasters.

So that's my story of coffee! My husband and I still share coffee drinking as a common "love language". We still go to Course Coffee all the time. We still try new shops here and there, though not as much as we used to, what with having a toddler now!

I hope my story inspires you to try your own local shops in your area, and develop your taste for this wonderful, versatile beverage. 

The first latte I ever had at Course Coffee Roasters, this was in 2021. It was a seasonal drink they had called a "Golden Compass", it had turmeric and black pepper and was delightful!

If you need a place to start, I would recommend checking out on YouTube:

• Morgan Drinks Coffee / Morgan Eckroth
• James Hoffman
• Ethan Rode

To name a few favorites!

Farewell now, and thank you for reading!

A beautiful shot by me and my little iPhone, taken at Coma Coffee, most likely in 2022. 

Do you drink coffee? What's your coffee "story"? What is your favorite coffee drink? Let me know in the comments!

- Amaris ☆ //

The Four Things Tag (REVISITED)

Hello Friends,

As of late, I have been reminiscing on this old blog and looking at some old posts. 

That's when I came across this post, The Four Things Tag, which I published in October of 2018! Which was quite a long time ago. 

I thought it would be fun to revisit these questions to see how my life and my preferences have changed. 

So without further ado, here are my New Answers: 

 ❊ The Four Things Tag  ❊

~*~*~*~

❊ Four Jobs I've Had ❊

~ The Home Depot (all different positions!)

~ Bowlero (bartending was my favorite position at that job!)

~ Michael's (my very first job, cashiering)

~ A graphic design and logo embroidery small business in Creve Coeur

Me in 2021 at my Home Depot store! I have lots of good memories there :)

❊ Four Things I Don't Eat ❊

~ Junk food (except maybe twice a year... and I always regret it XD)

~ Red Dye 40 (or any artificial dyes - when I can help it!)

~ Ultra processed foods

~ Candy

(Are any of the above even "Foods"?? Lol)

❊ Four Places I've Lived ❊

~ Childhood home in Hazelwood, MO

~ Small Apartment in Creve Coeur, MO (I had to look up how to spell "Creve Coeur" I still don't even know XD)

~ My fiance's basement (for a short time - we're married now Lol) in St. Charles, MO

~ (Current): Two Bedroom Apartment in St. Charles, MO

My beloved spice shelves at our current apartment here in St. Charles, MO! I installed them myself using hobby boards from Home Depot. I am quite proud of them.

❊ Four of my Favorite Foods ❊

~ Pretty much ANY curry (but Butter Chicken is a fave - It's probably the ultimate white people favorite of Indian food LOL)

~ Grass Fed Steak (especially during menstruation or the luteal phase!)

~ Seafood of any kind (especially scallops and salmon)

~ Nourish Bowls of any kind (Pictured is this bowl here)

Recipe is from Peace Love Hormones

❊ Four Movies I've Watched More Than Once ❊

~ Julie & Julia

~ The Incredibles

~ The Founder

~ Twilight (my husband and I rewatch the movies every year for his bday!)

From Julie & Julia (2009)

❊ Four TV Shows I Watch ❊

~ Breaking Bad (rewatch every 5 years)

~ Avatar: The Last Airbender (you can't beat perfection)

~ The Office (ongoing, all the time)

~ Legend of Korra

"I believe, Aang can save the world"

❊ Four Things I'm Looking Forward To This Coming Year ❊

~ New business opportunities

~ Learning to can (I canned a few things last year with a friend, I'm going to learn how to do it myself next month so I can can whatever and whenever I want!)

~ More time having fun with my son (continual and ongoing since I quit my job)

~ Cooking new things all the time!

❊ Four Things I Can't Live Without ❊

~ My Bidet! Seriously I don't know how I existed without it! BEST $30 I ever spent!

~ My Dutch oven, I use this one weekly to make my boule shaped sourdough!

~ My Study Bible I've had since 2011

~ My family (my husband and my son)

My beloved study bible!

❊ Four Places I've Visited ❊

~ Branson, MO

~ Colorado (in 2011, for a family wedding)

~ Florida (in 2003, for another family wedding)

~ San Antonio, Texas (in 2010, related to my Dad's job)

(I need to travel more, LOL)

❊ Four Pet Peeves ❊

~ When people don't clean up after themselves

~ When my house plant is doing well until I change it to a new pot, and then, BOOM. Dead. 

~ When I accidentally get coffee grounds in my coffee while making it. 

~ When I'm JUST about to fall asleep and then my son wakes up in the night.

❊ Four Things I Wish I Could Do ❊

~ Travel more (especially to Europe)

~ Own a house (someday... it's hard for us zillenials)

~ Garden (especially herbs and tomatoes!!)

~ Write better

Me in August of 2021. I had just started dating my future husband :)

❊ Four Subjects I Studied In School ❊

Oh man, school was so long ago LOL. Instead I'll name "four educational topics that interest me"

~ History of Shipwrecks (I listen to a LOT of videos about shipwreck stories, LOL)

~ The size and age of the universe and the curiosities to be found in the cosmos

~ The History of Rome

~ Home economics, since that's basically my life now :)

❊ Four Things Near Me Right Now ❊

~ A Pothos Plant

~ My Son (always, he's 2 Lol)

~ Our Patio

~ My son's climbing triangle

~*~*~*~

Well, there you have it. My answers have definitely evolved a lot! For one, I'm married now, living independently with my husband, and am a mom now! My likes and dislikes have changed a lot, but they've also stayed the same in many ways! 

This was fun. In another 7 years, maybe I'll take it again. I hope I am still blogging then! :)

If you're reading this post, I TAG YOU! :)

- Amaris ☆ //

Grieving the Living

Hello Friends - 

If you have been reading this blog for the past 1-2 years or so, you may recall reading that my husband and our family made the decision to go no contact with a family member awhile back. 

❀ 

This is a topic that has come up several times here on the blog. That fact reflects the reality of my life, in that the processing and grieving is a frequent thing for me.

Every day our north facing windows get just a single gleam of sunlight in the late afternoon. Who better to benefit than my lowly and lovely pothos? 

I won't discuss in detail who the family member was, (though you don't have to be a Pinkerton level detective to piece together who it is based on my past posts, LOL) because this post is about my thoughts not on the person, but on the aftermath, and my journey with forgiveness and the rollercoaster of ups and downs that come with all of it. 

❀ 

The amount of time that has passed since the no-contact decision was made (in 2023) has given me ample time to process it, heal from it, grow from it, as well as feel all the feelings associated with it a million times over. 

❀ 

The feeling that I would never escape the anger and pain was very prominent in the weeks following the initial cutoff. I worried, too, about the fact that I was feeling those feelings in the first place. After all, I don't want to be some unforgiving, angry, embittered individual who hated the memory and impact of this person (who shall henceforth be referred to as "the narc" for ease of writing).

This was taken the same month that I went no contact with the person. We were visiting Webster Groves and had a lovely time with our still-new son.

❀ ❀ ❀ 

But the hope of the situation is that I have learned some very important truths from October 2023 through July 2025: 

❀ I don't need to be worried about the angry and bitter phases of this process ❀ 

It is perfectly appropriate to allow each stage of grief to come and go multiple times over, including the phases where I am angry and feeling resentful. This is a natural and complex part of the grieving process. 

My small child at our favorite coffee shop

❀  The process of grief is not predictable and should not be put on a time limit ❀ 

A huge part of this fact is managing the expectations. I would have expected to be "healed" and "happy" about the whole thing by now. But the reality is, focusing on how long this thing is taking is just distracting from the real work and effort of healing at all. It does me no good to indulge in the disappointment of thinking "Hey! I thought I already healed and forgiven this part!" But instead to extend patience to myself, much like I would extend patience with my toddler, when he has difficult moods, or even my husband. I deserve the same care of patience as they deserve to receive it from me.

Our favorite coffee shop has the coziest and cutest chairs!

❀ Each and every stage of the healing journey can be felt, and should be felt freely ❀ 

But each of the feelings should be felt objectively, and with the understanding that the feelings aren't me. They are passersby. Here today, gone tomorrow. They too, shall pass. My identity is not determined by how I am feeling, but by what I believe, and what the Bible tells me I am in Christ.

❀ Working through feelings of anger, bitterness, and even un-forgiveness isn't a "sin" problem ❀ 

In fact, it's a reflection of the feeling nature that GOD made us as emotional beings, in HIS image! Now don't get me wrong, intentionally choosing to indulge in these feelings can be problematic, and at times, sinful. But allowing them to pass through me and around me, being an observer, is normal and an important part of understanding that I am not those feelings! 

Upshot Coffee Brake Shop

❀ Hope and progress is evidenced by the fact that every time I complete a phase of anger, I am more healed when it is over ❀ 

If I were to over-occupy myself in worrying about and micromanaging the times that I feel angry, then I would be too caught up in self-correcting myself and miss the opportunities to learn what GOD has for me in that phase. 

❀ I've come to acknowledge and accept that in the larger picture, the pain won't ever go away fully, but life will just get bigger around it ❀ 

After all, what is life full of, besides this pain of loss? 

I get to:

• Focus on and spend time with the people who really know me.
• Focus on getting to know myself, and watching my hobbies, interests, and values evolve with time.
• Try new things intentionally, and not be complacent in ways that are not healthy or helpful for progress.
• Focus on improving my own mentalities about life with self-reflection and self-examination, because not tolerating the narc's behavior, means that I also should not tolerate it in myself.
• Get closer to GOD who made me, and allowed me all the feelings that come with a complicated situation.

❀ ❀ ❀ 

Well friends, that's all for now. 

The thoughts above don't necessarily have to apply to the particular grief I am experiencing with losing a family member that I no longer speak to. 

They can apply to many difficult decisions in life, and any regret. If I've learned anything besides what I talk about above, it's that there are lots of things in life that can cause grief, not just by losing someone. 

So if you are in a season of grieving, or know someone who is (for ANY reason), just know that I'm praying for you. And I hope you are encouraged by the words above!

Until next time - 

p.s. I also wanted to throw out there, that a big part of me learning to heal and grow from the situation is actually, surprisingly, NOT talking about it that much. When everything was fresh, I used to often include it in an introduction to myself, or at least include it in conversation within the first few talks with a person I was getting to know. It was getting to be very "Hi, my name is Amaris and this [Insert Trauma Here] happened to me". Such a drag, right! I came to this realization, and had to stop myself - because the more I was doing that, the more I was making the situation a part of my identity, a part of me. And the last thing I want to do is let this all develop into a victim mentality. 

Maybe, just maybe, I don't even need to talk about this until, like, I don't know, I'm at a much deeper level of friendship with people I trust and who would benefit from hearing my story. 

Revolutionary, I know. I'm learning! And that's all I can do. 

All that to say... after this post, I'm planning to not mention it very much here on the blog, if at all. Because... at this point, why? Yes, it played a part in making me who I am. But there are so much MORE and BETTER things that have made me who I am. Things that have determined what I enjoy today. Things that determine what I believe in today. Things that make me... me today. 

So my intention is to focus on these things instead, for the most part. That is not to say, that I don't plan to talk about difficult things in my life I'm going through. I do plan on that, and will do so, because otherwise I don't think this blog would be an authentic representation of my thoughts that it always has been or that I desire it to be! 

I just want to have discernment with how much I put out there, how often, and keeping in mind WHO I am choosing to become by how little or how much I talk about it. 

There, that's all for real this time. NOW I'm done. Ok, go enjoy the rest of your day. :)

- Amaris ☆ //