The hardest-hitting time of year, but not without its joys

Well. Four months after my last post, and let me tell you, I've kind of been going through it. There's a lot to catch up on, and I hardly know where to start. The holiday season was absolutely wild in the Lynch home this year. We had a lot of great moments, and I dealt with some of my lowest points of mental health that I have ever been through. And then January hit, with even more highs and lows. We made some incredible memories, but the rollercoaster left me completely exhausted.

So, I guess we can start with the holidays. Halloween was kind of hectic. The next two years we won't see Halloween like we are used to seeing it, as Americans. My understanding is that while the young adults in Japan are picking up on it as a fun celebration, the youth of the nation do not trick-or-treat, so it will look very different for the kids in 2026 and 2027, at the very least. We crammed as much Halloween-themed fun and fall activities into October as we could. Pumpkin patches, hay rides, fall festivals, apple picking. When Halloween finally hit, we were in the midst of a government shut down. So even handing out treats on Halloween was different this year. (Which started out with a bang because one of my demon arm lanterns was knocked from its perch by the wind and smacked me straight in the temple.) I stocked up, though, and in addition to candy and non-food treats, I made sure we had a ton of non-perishable snacks and food items to hand out. I figured we likely had a lot of kids in our area whose parents would be affected by the shutdown and would possibly be facing food insecurity, so I bought canned soup, easy mac, Spaghetti-Ohs, and more. Which turned out to be a huge hit. I have never seen so many teenagers get excited and act like a bunch of seven year olds. It was amazing.

The walking trail I like to use, during our first snow this fall.

Then came November. A month where one is usually plotting ideas for Christmas and contemplating all the ways one if thankful for whatever good is going on in their lives. I was on a new medication, I was driving myself crazy making handmade photographic prints for our Christmas cards, and a good friend of mine passed away. It had only been two months since I had photographed her wedding. I don't know that she ever got to see some of the more unique prints I made for her. Kristy was a friend who knew what it felt like to lose a child, and she was such an amazing friend to me and a wonderful support for Taylor (she was Taylor's daycare teacher) as we lost Hannah. It was a perfect storm, and I slid into a very deep depression. I was actively contemplating suicide, something I am not proud of, but I refuse to be ashamed of it, either, because I now understand that the emotions I was experiencing were real, but grossly amplified by the medications I was on at the time. But the cause of the depth is irrelevant now. I keep that in mind, though, because in my grief, I know I'm not fully out of the woods yet.

Rest in Paradise, my beautiful friend. Until we meet again, look out for my girl, okay? I miss you.

I have never, even in my darkest moments, considered ending my life on the scale I experienced this year. The loss of my daughter, my dog, and two very good friends in less than two years seemed like so much more than I could carry. A small number of people in my life were aware of how I was feeling at that point. I'd love to be able to tell you I felt completely supported throughout those weeks. But it would be a lie. Most of the people who knew checked on me maybe once, and then either disappeared into the void, or leaned back into the habit of treating me like an unbreakable emotional support for whatever they were going through. I won't demean any of them or the problems they were struggling with because many of those situations are pretty severe, and in normal circumstances, I one hundred percent would be what they needed me to be. And I tried. I really did. I don't know if I succeeded, but I will say that it didn't help me at all. In fact, it made it worse, because I felt like my own struggle with suicidal ideation didn't matter to any of them beyond what use they had for me and how they would suffer if they lost me that way. So once again, I was in the position of having to fight my way out of the depths, largely on my own.

I'm writing all of this out not because I want pity or because I want anyone who reads this to be upset with anyone in my life. I'm writing it out because I know there are people who sometimes read this little-known blog who suffer from the same ideations. Please, from one who has been there, if you are feeling suicidal, please do not hesitate to get help. If you don't have any personal support, please call the Suicide Hotline at 988.

Okay. Getting a bit out of the weeds there, and moving on to the holiday season. Like I said, I drove myself nuts with the cards this year. And then I was planning a large number of gifts for each of the kids and Zach, plus each of them got two experience gifts. We took the two younger kids on a cruise before Christmas. Not to mention the games. This year I invested heavily in a day of games and fun, so on Christmas Eve, I had special boxes made that I stuffed with matching PJs, coffee mugs, hot cocoa packets that I made myself, wooden ornaments for decorating, a piece of holiday decor, socks, and beanies. And then we played a series of five games, each with various prizes and gifts. In between the cruise and Christmas, I knocked out some thirteen dozen homemade Christmas cookies. Emma wasn't here for that, but she did come up for New Years, so we did all of that again so that she could be part of it all. On New Years, we let the kids stay up to see the ball drop. I taped a plastic tablecloth to the ceiling and stuffed it full of balloons and we pulled it down at midnight. We had a silly string fight and set of confetti poppers. So yes, the holidays were super chaotic and stressful. But they were also magical, and I am not a little proud of how I pulled it all off this year. So much so that I'm already planning next year, which will be a very different event, but one I'm excited about.

One of the really cool gifts I received this year was a walking photography tour of some of the memorials and monuments at night. (Thanks, babe!) It was cold and by the end I couldn't feel my fingers anymore, but I got some amazing images and had a really great time in the process. Here are a few of the shots I took:

You can probably guess that following all of that, I was in serious need of a break. I flew down to Florida for a week by myself, and spent that time hunting shark teeth. I also spontaneously decided to add shelling to my calendar, so I booked a tour out of Marco Island and had an absolutely wonderful time finding shells. So. Many. Shells. I wound up having to buy a whole suitcase just to get them home, and wound up upgrading my flight because oddly, it was cheaper than paying for the bags to be checked. I went up the Peace River with Paleo Discoveries (huge shout out to Fred Mazza!), and by the time I came home, I had just over a thousand new teeth to add to my collection.

A few days after I got home, I got some news that hurt, but what hurt worse was reading about it on Facebook and realizing that nobody thought enough of me to just tell me. I'm not fully ready to talk about that in a public forum, but I will say that it affected me as Hannah's mom, and then I discovered her Facebook page had been compromised and I was forced to have it turned into a memorial page. I was very much not ready to do that. And to make it all better, the reaction I had to all of it I really don't think was out of left field, but I was told in no uncertain terms that it was pretty shitty of me. Maybe it was. I'm still trying to work out whether or not I care if it makes me the bad guy, but hearing from the source I heard it from changed something in me, and not in a good way.

A few days later, the ice storm hit the northeast. Right at the start of the week that was the two-year anniversary of the wreck, and Hannah's death. Two years, and I still don't understand the world without her in it. I don't know how to be myself without her. I miss myself and I don't know how to process that. I miss her so deeply and sometimes I feel very alone in that, even when I know other people miss her, too. We were iced in for most of that week, and I was more than a little annoyed that the school district canceled school every day that week and the following Monday, but only because they announced each day the evening before. If I had had any idea whatsoever that the kids would have been out of school for more than a week, we would have gone to Florida. I could have used more shells.

On top of all of this mess, I found out that the mountain of dental work I spent months sitting in a chair for and five digits paying for, was done incorrectly. So now I'm in the midst of correcting it for even more money, time, and pain. I swear, when it rains, it pours.

One little bright spot in all of this? Sand dollars. When I was young, my paternal grandmother used to go shelling. She would come home with a bunch of sand dollars and let all of us grandkids paint them however we liked. I love those memories, and have thought of them often when I'm on a beach. My grandma had an eye for finding them. I do not. But I did manage to find two dead sand dollars in good condition while I was shelling in Florida, and I managed to bring them home safely along with my pile of other treasures. I gave one to each of my littles and let them decorate them with paint markers. But I had a conundrum. What to do with such fragile things to make them last? A while back, I had considered trying my hand at resin art. I'd still like to get into it eventually, but the startup costs and the inability to bring the supplies to Japan with us have stayed my hand in that arena. I did, however, find a local artist in Ashburn, at BG Resin Art. After some back and forth, I met up with her this weekend with those sand dollars, and she taught me how to use resin, sand, shells, mica powders, and heat applications to create a couple of beautiful trays. Encompassed in resin, the sand dollars should be much more durable, and I think the kids will love them. (They are still with Kanika, so the littles haven't seen them yet.) I had a wonderful time learning from Kanika, and getting to know her. I'm hoping to spend more time creating functional art with her again very soon. Maybe sometime I'll incorporate some of my shark teeth, or my shells, or possibly some of Hannah's ashes. We'll see. But the opportunity to create art out of a generational memory is truly special, and I hope someday my kids think back on it and love it as much as I do.

I've been out hunting teeth once since getting back from Florida. There's been an enormous sewage spill in the Potomac, though, and even though the tidal tributary I most often hunt them in is many, many miles downstream from here, I find conflicting reports on whether that area is safe. Closer to home, within at least ten miles of the spill, there are very dangerous levels of E. Coli, MRSA, staph, and various other bacteria in the river. Thankfully, our drinking water comes from farther north than where the spill originated. In the meantime, between the spill and the ridiculous cold, I haven't been out again yet. I'm hoping to go out again soon, but I may have to find a new spot to hunt while they mitigate the damage to the river.

That's pretty much the rundown, and now you're all caught up on the Lynch life for the last four months. And yes, in case you were wondering, I did stop taking the medication that amplified my grief so badly, and yes, I am generally feeling much better. I'm looking forward to the schools being back to normal and settling into a routine. We've begun doing things like getting our shots for travel to Asia, and we're hoping Zach's orders come through very soon. We should be leaving here in about four, maybe four and a half months, so time is really flying.

I haven't finished my book yet. I still have about twenty thousand words left to get to the goal in the first draft, but I am very close to closing out draft one and beginning edits and revision. I have some ideas for book two already, and a few for other projects. I also have a ton of images I need to update on my photos page for this site, too! Now to keep myself on track and hold myself accountable for it all. I'm going to try to be better about all of it this year. For the sake of my family, and for my own.