It’s also day 255 of me keeping my daily social media intake under 30 minutes.

As someone who averaged 8 hours on my iPhone a day, color me impressed with my current self!

I have had a good amount of friends and followers of those accounts reach out to me and tell me that they miss seeing my posts and life updates, as rare as they became in the end. I think it would be fun to make little life “blog” posts here once a month too! I’ll give it a shot, why not!

This July was definitely a turning point for me.

Ever since I became a mom, I find myself in many rapid-session cycles of change, shedding, and renewal. Which is quite fitting since these last few weeks have involved raising and releasing our Polyphemus moths. My daughter has become a “moth/butterfly whisperer” now.

Before the final moth, out of the 19 we raised, my 3 year old said “The moth says bye and I love you!” and then it wiggled its fluffy little legs and flew off into the evening sky.

Our little garden, though a bit neglected, has become overgrown with tomatoes, rosemary, basil, calendula, garden sage, thyme, oregano, parsley, and our marigolds are almost devouring the rest.

Our tomatoes and basil seemed to be included in every other meal! The kitchen cannot currently escape the smell of pesto and fresh bread.

I visited a friend the other day and traded her one of my fresh loaves of sourdough for a jar of her homemade pickles from cucumbers and a few zucchinis that she grew in her own garden. She has a wonderful home and seeing my two children play in the grassy fields with her three children made my heart melt. How wonderful it is to have good mama friends!

I had never made anything with zucchini before, but my bff recommended making muffins or bread with them. I made muffins as soon as I got home and they were a hit!

Ohhhhhh my goodness, I also knocked something huge off my bucket list in July too— seeing Danny Elfman in the flesh performing with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra!! PHEW doggy let me tell ya!!! For those who have followed me for a long time….you know how I adore him LOL

Amazing show. I was stunned. I have been a fan of him and his work my entire life and it was just SUCH a treat seeing him in person and hearing the music that raised me. My husband and I were so close to the stage too!! My heart. What a dream come true!!

My baby boy is about to wake up now so I’m going to wrap this update up. I’m currently typing this while he’s on my chest. A calm rain is tapping on the window and my belly is full of bacon and eggs….and a zucchini muffin, hehe!

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty great. I’m happy and healthy and full of love.

Seeya again soon!

Deleted.

It’s gone.

After 14 years of spending the majority of my days scrolling and posting on that app—it’s finally gone.

I took one last long scroll on my page. I scrolled way back to the very beginning, skimming nearly 6000 pictures in the span of 15 minutes, and stared longingly at my first post; a young, paler and thinner version of myself with freshly dyed purple hair. My first selfie in 2012.

I really used to love Instagram. I remember when it first released and how much fun it was just to post random stuff with silly captions without giving a shit how many likes or comments it got. I would mostly post stupid inside jokes between my little sister and I, and she would do the same. She’d post a picture of Shrek and caption it something like “when my sister looks at me like this”…

And then I would post the same Shrek picture, but flipped, and post with a caption “when my sister sees this post…” and then we’d hear the laughter from us both coming from our own bedrooms.

My earlier posts were incredibly dumb and made no sense, but that’s what made them hilarious (to me and my sister mostly lol).

It was really jarring though, skimming through 14 years of my life that I publicly shared. Did I really need to share that selfie of me in the doctor’s office? Did I really have to constantly complain about how poor I was and how I lacked food and was freezing to death and starving all the time?? Did I need to post that picture of my foot?

And these posts have just been public this entire time? Agh.

The further I kept scrolling, the darker it got. More and more awful memories and dreadful nostalgia washed over me with each swipe of my thumb. Sure, there were lots of silly and beautiful posts sprinkled in there, but I could almost remember how I was feeling when I made each post.

Memories of my depression, panic disorder, loneliness, desperation..

I don’t want to remember these things. Why must they remain documented like this? Especially publicly for thousands of eyes to see at any time. I always liked having a “timeline” of my life, but when I looked back it just gave me the ick. Always gave me the ick. Why do I have to keep looking back?

I’ve been wanting to delete most of my social medias ever since I had my daughter in early 2023. I wasn’t aware at the time how much non-toxic-holistic-natural-homestead-cottage core-mommy culture was influencing my life. It was like social media, the algorithm, latched onto me like leeches when I became a new mom.

New moms, new parents, are especially vulnerable and desperate for knowledge, and…very gullible.

“Top 20 things EVERY mom needs!”

“Protect your baby with THIS device! And this one and this one!”

“Things I will NEVER feed my child”

“Things I will ALWAYS feed my child”

“STOP doing these things because it’s harming your child!”

Not to mention all of the

✨AFFILIATE LINKS✨

(Man…I even had my own affiliate link for a small business that I actually enjoy and I STILL felt icky when I would post it and link it to my stories. I hate the feeling of trying to sell a product (if it’s not my own artwork).)

My social media feeds were being slowly quickly consumed by posts like that. Over the years, I mentally banked some helpful tips that felt right for me and my children, but the rest of the information/advice/influence that was force fed to my eyes every time I logged onto my accounts planted deep seeds of doubt, fear, and guilt into my brain and constantly made me feel like I was broken and needed fixing. I wasn’t even following these accounts to begin with?? Show me who I actually follow, you piss-heads!!

The algorithm loves to make ya feel low so it can sell you a cure!

There’s a supplement for this!

There’s a hack for that!

Let’s optimize this!

Tired all the time? TAKE MY $7000 e-course and I’ll fix ya!!

I know it’s not just Instagram that tries to get under your skin like that. All socials pretty much want to sell you shit all the time, which is a shame because I truly remember the internet before the age of advertising and mass consumerism…and boy it was fun.

There was a time, I believe it fell somewhere in between the years 2017-2019, where my Instagram and TWITTER (fuck x) were BUMPIN’.

I had 110k followers on twitter and about 113k followers on an instagram account of mine. I made a lot of friends online, made and posted tons of new art almost every single day, and the likes and comments and shares just came pooooouring in and I was thriving!

I was also averaging 6-9 hours a day on my phone, barely left my house or saw sunlight, hardly saw friends in real life, and was eating cereal for breakfast lunch and dinner most days.

I absolutely was not thriving lol

I was drowning and didn’t even know it. Boiling alive like a happy frog with a smile on my face. I wrote about all that in my previous essay about cutting down social media.

I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this other than it just feels very weird to exist right now when the world is just so fuckin nutso and all the Big Tech overlords want to do is make people feel like ass so they can sell us shit.

I’m just looking forward to life without the big gram.

And it already feels good. ;)

Do what you can. Release what you can’t control. Tend to your garden so you can share your harvests with others. Be kind. Be aware.

Much love,

Ciara

I was sitting alone per usual on my final bus ride to school with that nervous ache in my stomach that uncertainty, excitement, and anxiety can bring. My MP3 player was playing Breathe Me by Sia. Tears streamed down my face.

I was petrified about graduating high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Public schooling was all I ever knew.

All throughout my young school years I was certain I would attend and graduate the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, then move swiftly to Florida or California to work as an animator and create breathtaking Disney films.

That was until I had then recently visited the Art Institute and had all of my hopes shattered from nearly every aspect of the place (the tuition, the dorms, the location, the teachers, the student works, etc). Let alone the fact Disney had been pulling the plug on 2D hand drawn animation in turn for 3D CGI. Call me old school, but I was not a fan of the direction animation was heading towards.

It was all suddenly very unappealing and I felt in my gut…that was not the life I really wanted.

The bus was nearing my school and I was doing my best to collect myself and wipe away my tears. Then something clicked.

I just wanted to write. I wanted to make characters. I wanted to write stories. I wanted to draw for myself.

I didn’t want to live in a city. I didn’t want to move away from my home state. I wanted to stay in the countryside and create art that really mattered to me. That’s it!

I wanted to tell my story, not work on someone else’s. I had and have things to say.

Thus the idea for Gwendy & Ghost sparked in my brain as I got off the bus. I wanted to tell my story about how I grew up, with some magical and supernatural twists and turns here and there sprinkled in.

I thought about my story all day, trying to drown out the bittersweet, stomach churning, life altering feeling of that final day of high school.

In one of my classes, which seemed pointless to work on literally anything school related since it was the last day, I sketched a little girl that I named in my head Gwendy.

Gwendy represented myself when I was 5 years old—happy, bubbly, full of wonder for the magic that life offered. And I thought about how that magic would fade for her overtime, as it did for me, and the struggle to hold on to what little good there was for her as she aged.

When I was young, I never felt I could be vulnerable and speak my true thoughts and feelings to someone older than me. I wondered what it would’ve been like if I had just one person I could’ve always turned to in times of need—and that’s when my character, Ghost, was thought up. A guardian, a protector, a friend, someone who I could have trusted with my true self back then.

Sure, I had my parents, grandparents, aunts and an uncle…but for some reason I was always too ashamed to show them when I felt weak. I kept it so deeply hidden in myself. No one was allowed to see me feel sad, sick, scared, uncertain, depressed. I feared judgement and rejection more than anything.

And those people often made me feel those things—judged and rejected, or just made me feel outright stupid.

I just wanted someone to listen to me.

My heart hurts for my little self, thinking about how insecure about her own feelings and desires she was. I wish I could hug her.

But that’s how my comic has felt, even after all these years of working on it. It feels like a big hug to my past selves and all the hardships that they have endured.

And then one day…

I was healed.

Or I should say, after having my second baby, and the years of pregnancy and motherhood that led up to my son’s birth, I no longer felt emotionally tethered to my webcomic.

My webcomic no longer provides me the healing of my past that I once sought after so hard—because it’s been healed!

I have forgiven myself, the people who wronged me, the terrible environment and unhealthy situations that I lived with on the daily. The manipulations, the lies, the abuses of power, the cheating, the heartbreaks, the deaths…

I have forgiven it all.

And I gotta say, I feel INCREDIBLY happy, content, at peace, worthy, loved, desired, and most importantly—I feel enough. FINALLY I feel that I am simply and beautifully enough!

But, the only downside of being unconditionally happy with my current season of life is this simple fact:

I no longer have motivation to work on my webcomic.

Sometimes even looking at it makes me cringe. Or my stomach twists with guilt from how much of the story is still left to draw out in comic form. I feel completely terrible leaving some of my most loyal fans and readers in the dust by hitting the brakes on updates.

And what a cliffhanger I’ve left y’all at too!

I’m so sorry!

Did I take a break from my comic only because I reached eternal bliss with my own life? Not quite.

Did I finally achieve enlightenment because I drastically cut back on my social media content creation and consumption? No, but I’ll be damned it helped!

A huge reason for my healing has simply been motherhood.

Ever since having my wee babies, I’ve been cocooning and rebirthing into butterfly after butterfly over and over and over again.

The mass identity and perspective shifts and internal sheddings I’ve experienced in the last 6 years…let me tell ya. Phew. I am not who I used to be in the slightest. I am getting better each day. I am ever changing.

That being said, I also have absolutely zero time to myself. Even if I had those strong urges and desires to go work on my comic for hours at a time like I used to, I could not and would not.

I am fully present and needed by my two children. My sweet Eve and little Arthur.

When Eve was just a lil baby-boo, we contact-napped a lot, sure, but she also enjoyed her 2 hour naps to herself in her little crib while mama was able to draw for my comic in the meantime.

Arthur, currently my nearly 6 month old chubby bubby baby boy, absolutely refuses to nap on his own. He will only nap on me and sleep next to me at night. He wants nothing to do with his crib. Therefore, this mama cannot get any time to go sit at a computer and work.

(Yes, we’ve tried baby-wearing. He hates it. Makes no sense, right?)

I’ve battled those frustrating “but I should be doing xyz instead of sitting doing nothing while he naps on me” thoughts over and over, but I’ve finally surrendered to them; because I know that this constant need of me from my children will not last forever.

There was even a moment the other day when my son fell asleep in a swing and I was left standing there, frozen in the “okay what do I do with myself” mama paralysis.

Note: I just sat on the couch and cuddled with my daughter while we watched Little Bear. Working on my comic didn’t even cross my mind.

Honestly, my comic rarely comes to mind anymore. When I do have those few moments and sprinkles of alone time to myself, I would much rather:

-bake bread

-read a book (I just finished The Hobbit for the first time ever! Isn’t that crazy?!)

-stretch

-watch a show/cuddle with my husband

-take a hot bath (especially with my husband!)

-do a full face skin care routine (gua sha time!)

-journal

-have some hot tea and a lil treat

-draw something simple and cute

So…

Will I ever finish Gwendy & Ghost?

Yes. Without a doubt.

I trust that I will. It’s taking a lot longer than expected to finish the story, but I know it will be complete someday.

Just not while my babies are still so young.

After all, I have more story to tell.

And it will be told.

Yeesh!

Yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that.

And yes, that was mostly on social media. I was posting maybe 2-4 times a day on apps like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr…etc.

I thankfully escaped the grasp of TikTok before even starting. Phew!

I was alone. I barely had friends in real life and I was with an emotionally unavailable partner at the time (who was also glued to their phone/video games just as much as I was). I never left the house. I just stayed home, made art, and worked on my webcomic, Gwendy & Ghost from dawn to dusk, then looked at my phone for the remaining hours I had in between those things.

I had 100k+ followers on both IG and Twitter. It was a lot of hard work to get there.

After I would post, I monitored each like, comment, and share that my posts received and I would, of course, feel high from all the attention. You know the feeling. I never wanted it to end.

That sweet, sweet engagement. So I made sure to post more and more. Keep posting!! Mmmm dopamine num num num!

It felt successful and maybe, in that moment in my life, it was. It totally was.

I made a lot of online friends who I’m still friends with today. I made lots of connections with cool and interesting, creative people. I will always be very thankful for that.

I felt that I had made it. The numbers of likes and followers proved that, right? I wanted more numbers. More more more!

Not to mention I was making money. Just add that into my ego.

I thought I was happy. As it turned out…

I was absolutely not happy.

I was chronically anxious and had panic attacks almost every night before bed. I suffered with insomnia, agoraphobia, and feeling completely worthless.I felt a huge lack of SOMETHING in my life, but I didn’t know what it was. Or, actually, I did know what it was but I was in denial. I knew what I wanted.

Babies.

But how could I, an actual 27 year old adult-baby who was in a relationship with another adult-baby, possibly have an actual baby? With him?? No way.

Swallow that desire, Ciara! You’ll never have kids! You hate kids!! Kids ruin your life remember? Pregnancy will make you fat and ugly, Ciara! Just like everyone said!

And then….

Boom. The pandemic hit. 2020.

I don’t know what happened, but I decided to turn my life completely upside down by going on outdoor adventures with new friends and completely breaking the pandemic rules of social distancing and quarantining.

“Stay inside! Avoid people!” The pandemic said. I didn’t get the memo.

I still wore the masks though.

My ex & I split. I then met my current husband.

I sold my old house, bought a new one in a new city.

Got married a couple of years later to someone who actually loves and makes me happy!!

Had the two babies of my dreams!!

Started pursuing herbalism, baking from scratch, cooking at home, and fell in love with mothering my children and fully embodying the homemaker spirit.

My art, my content, my posts, something that used to completely dominate my time — vanished.

My number of likes and followers plummeted.

But so did my screen time. (Yay!)

My average 6-9 hours a day turned into 3-4 (which was honestly still a lot, but hey that’s one hell of an improvement in my book.)

You see, I no longer had the free time to be chronically online like I was in my maiden years (when I was unhappy and trying to fill the void, no less). The algorithm didn’t like that. Bah! How dare I have a life!

This affected my metal health drastically during the postpartum months after my first child. I was all upset that I wasn’t getting as much engagement as before. What happened? Do people not like me anymore?

Where did my external validation go?

“Where’s me dopamine hits???” I ask myself in a pirate voice.

:(

I remember thinking once while I was rocking my newborn:

“I’m stuck here in this chair for hours a day, rocking and nursing my sleeping baby when I SHOULD be making art and videos and posting!”

And I could feel myself actually getting aggravated that I couldn’t get up to go do something that didn’t involve holding my baby!

Imagine! Your darling baby, the perfect being you nourished and grew inside you, oh so happily smiling at you and looking into your eyes with such love as you hold them, and you thinking:

“damn I wish this kid would fall asleep so I can check my phone already.”

As if being confined to the rocking chair, being nap-trapped, gave me permission to browse Instagram guilt free. But what else IS THERE to do while sitting in a chair???

What kind of evil overcame me in those moments?

Oh, I know. Addiction.

It dawned on me in that moment that, woah, something was wrong. Me wanting to scroll on those apps started to make me resent my baby? Resent being a mother? I’m living the life I’ve always dreamed of! How could I not see that?!

I put down my phone. I felt my throat tighten. I realized I was addicted to social media right then and there.

I was scared—scared that my dopamine receptors were so fried that I felt more of a rush of excitement from a new follower or a cluster of likes compared to seeing my baby’s smile.

My heart breaks even remembering the fact that I felt that way even the slightest.

That was around the middle of 2023 when I had that revelation. I became more mindful of my scrolling tendencies and cut back drastically. I think my screen time went from 4 hours a day to 2 hours.

2 hours compared to 9 hours? I was damn proud. But something still didn’t feel right.

Actually, that something felt worse.

Whenever I would allow myself to scroll online for a bit after my baby fell asleep, my feeds were quickly filled with aesthetic, cottage-core, slow & simple lifestyle, homesteading, homeschooling, and non-toxic mommy-influencer accounts.

All of those things appealed to me. They still do… to some degree. I ate it all up at first, though. Every post I would see inspired me to become the mother I want for my children:

A magical mama who bakes delicious, nourishing food and treats, plays in nature with her kids, someone who is gentle and patient and relaxed and creative and always grounded and present in the moment.

Present in the moment.

Present in the moment….

Then, after a while, these accounts that I had been following all started to look…

…the exact same.

They were posting the same reels with the same “inspirational quotes” titled over videos of them showing quickly spliced snippets of their “slow & simple” lives. In their almost museum perfect homes with fireplaces and candles and copper pot filled kitchens and sourdough and wooden plates and bowls and and and—

A picture of their bare feet in the grass holding a matcha. Them in their gingham patterned clothes. Them all going thrifting. Hanging weaved baskets on their walls. Their IG stories and reels filled with 10%-15% affiliate codes for laundry detergent and links to their Amazon storefronts. Videos showcasing their neatly organized Montessori shelves for their homeschooled kids and preachings about how screen time is the devil and that you’re killing your children with micro-plastics.

Also…The Beige.

It started to get a bit creepy. The similarities I kept seeing almost screamed “cult” to me. (I know that’s quite the exaggeration lol but still.)

And what scared me the most is that I caught myself starting to post similar stuff! I felt myself being compelled to be just like them. They look like perfect mothers. I want to be perfect too! Maybe buying the things they are promoting will make me a good mom like them…

(Don’t get me wrong. I love being barefoot in the grass. I love matcha. I think the gingham pattern is cute. Thrifting is fun. Baskets are a vibe. I love a good discount code. Wooden toys are my fave and yes excessive screen use is a problem, but….)

You catch my drift.

I can’t be the only one who has noticed this pattern from mom-oriented accounts, right? Am I just being overly receptive? Maybe. I’ve always battled my over-active empathic tendencies and effort to not chameleon onto everyone I see.

It’s all coming from a good place. We all want to be good moms. We all want to be the best parents we can be for our children.

But maybe feeling the need to set up your phone to record little snippets of your daily life with your kids, then spending hours editing your videos and curating content for your Instagram page, isn’t really the best way to be “present in the moment”.

At least that’s how I feel about it personally, being an ex-content creator and all. I no longer wish to document my personal life for the algorithmic beast.

I no longer what to make content. I want to make art. I want to make tinctures. I want to make bread. I want to make memories with my kids while they are still so very young and while they need me to be the most present version of myself.

It’s been 30 days now since I limited my social media usage to 30 minutes or under.

It’s also been 30 days since I’ve picked or chewed my nails as a chronic nail biter since I was a kid. My hands are so beautiful now I could cry!

And it’s true, every thing you’ve already read about cutting back social media is true—

The clarity you experience is almost earth shattering. Your attention span regulates. You can sit in silence with your thoughts for long moments without feeling the urge to grab your phone and scroll. You’re more level-headed. Not as reactive. You feel more. You do more. You ARE more.

I look my kids in their eyes. My toddler no longer grabs my phone or requests to see videos or pictures. Instead we read books and watch our beloved slow-paced cartoons together. I can watch an entire movie without being on my phone now, by the way! That’s quite an achievement for me as someone who usually has to google where I’ve seen a certain actor immediately once their on screen.

In 2026, I would personally LOVE to just drop IG all together like I did Twitter. Account gone and all. It’s just not fun anymore.

ALSO ALL THE Ai IS DRIVING ME CRAZY

But, like many creatives, it’s like one of the only outlets to share your own artwork in hopes that someone will buy your art so you can eat that week.

:’)

(Not that my family is struggling to make ends meet, not currently thankfully, but you know what I mean. A lot of artists are just barely hanging on and need platforms like IG to stay a float.)

I completely understand the hesitation to just drop-kick social media entirely. It has its own share of goodness that can sometimes overshadow the negative. It’s just difficult to keep it at balance, especially as a new mom with tiny wee gnome children running around.

So, I now have an extra 8 hours in my daily life that doesn’t involve me scrolling social media, thinking about what to post for social media, or what to make and edit for social media.

In those extra precious hours I now have, I tend to:

-bake bread and cookies

-have tea parties with my toddler

-read stories to my babies

-make play dough

-blow bubbles

-read actual books

-chat with friends and family

-listen to records

-watch childhood movies with my kids

-do yoga and breath work

-write and journal

-be outdoors almost always in summer

-go on nutritious grocery shopping adventures

-walk around malls, museums, and greenhouses in winter

-learn a new craft

-plan and dream up long term goals for my family

-spend every waking moment in love with my life

With all that said, and I know I rambled a bit there but isn’t that the point of journaling?

….I am very much excited to make 2026 be there year where I am, in actuality, fully present and off social media as much as possible, not worrying about being forgotten online, and not feeling the urge to document and share my entire life on the internet.

And if I do decide to share snippets of my life, they will mostly be here on Substack.

I thank you all for taking the time to read this!

I wish that, you too, can one day feel freedom from the digital grasp of social media if you haven’t already let go.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be at peace.

Take care!

I grew up all throughout the 90s in a grand, three-story high, cinder block house that was built in 1890. It was my great-great grandmother’s home which I believe she purchased in the early 1920’s. It used to be a church, funeral home, and a small mom & pop market shop. It held a strange array of titles before it became my childhood home.

The winters there in my early childhood were, from what I can remember, magical, cozy, and….warm. I never thought the warmth would go away; figuratively and literally.

In 2001, after the passing of my great-grandmother who battled pancreatic cancer for years, I watched my family fall apart. My great-grandma (my little sister and I called her GG) was the glue that held our family together. After she died, it seemed like everyone in my family ran around manic like chickens with their heads cut off. No one knew how to live without her. No one knew how to take care of themselves. No one knew how to take care of our home.

To this day the details are muddled about what happened regarding our heating situation. I get a different story from each family member about the time when, in 2003, the two massive gas furnaces in our home were taken out.

I’ve been told they were sold for money. I’ve been told they were broken and taken to the dump. I’ve been told that the evil gas company came and repossessed them since we couldn’t afford our gas bill. I still have no idea which is true or if any if that is true.

I was 12 then and my sister was 7. There was pretty much nothing we could do and had to rely on the competence of our elders to keep us alive…and our 10 dogs, 9 cats, 2 ducks, hamsters, rabbits, and ferret. I’m not exaggerating those numbers either. I grew up with pet hoarders too, but that’s a different story for another day.

Somehow I had this idea that the way we were living was normal. Living in a house covered in dust and mold was normal. Home floors decorated with newspapers covered in pet urine and feces was normal. Being covered in flea bites was normal. It sucked, but it was normal and there was “nothing we could do”—to quote my family regarding every problem that would arise.

But the one thing that felt painfully abnormal was the sudden lack of heat in winter.

Seeing my breath before getting out of bed.

Ice on the inside of our windows.

Shampoo bottles turned to frozen jelly.

Icicles forming in you hair after bathing.

Yelling for someone to come point the hair dryer to our bodies when getting out of the bath so we wouldn’t freeze.

Pipes bursting, making drinking, bathing, and cleaning unobtainable.

Toilet bowls freezing completely to the point where we had to poop in plastic bags and toss them in the trash after praying that the heat from our pee would melt the toilet water enough to become flushable.

Wearing my school clothes to bed so I didn’t have to get dressed in the morning.

Shivering over a kerosene heater in our living room darkened by the many different sheets of cloth and plastic over our doorways and windows; longing to see sunlight again.

Seeing snow would fill me with dread. It terrified me. It meant another winter of freezing inside my house was near.

All of these circumstances became my new normal. After a while, after crying and screaming and cursing that we had to live like this “for some reason”, I suppose my nervous system numbed out more than my nose, hands and feet. I got used to it.

…

I lived 13 winters like that.

At 16, I began working as much as I could to be able to afford buying more kerosene for our heaters in the winter. What? We’re not supposed to run kerosene heaters indoors? Now they tell me…

My winter schedule looked like this:

5:30am— wake up fully clothed.

5:45am— scarf down what little cereal we had left.

6:15am—catch bus for high school. Finally somewhere warm!

7:00am— class bell rings

7am-2:45pm — HELL (but at least hell was warm)

3:00pm — I get home, use the bathroom (if it wasn’t frozen) and eat something as fast as possible before going to work.

5:00pm — go to my job at mall kiosk and or Barista at a bookstore

9:00pm— get back home, eat something small or leftover mall food

9:30pm— go to bed under as many electric blankets as humanly possible.

Rinse and repeat.

When I write it all out like that, knowing what I know now about health, I’m surprised I’m still alive.  No wonder I was in the ER nearly twice a month and dealt with chronic pain and anxiety/depression/panic disorder.

Not to mention my daily diet practically consisted of sugary cereal, instant mac & cheese, and a spoonful of peanut butter…and nothing else. Meat? Fruit? Veggies? Does frozen pizza count? No one in my family cooked. No one knew how.

And, perhaps the worst thing about it all, is now knowing that much of the pain and suffering myself and my family endured, could have been avoided. Almost all avoided.

Easily.

Well, maybe not as easy considering we were dirt poor and stuck in a seemingly inescapable pit of poverty, but the fact is when my GG died, all of the knowledge she had about making and maintaining a home died with her. Cooking, cleaning, bill management, all on her. My family was uneducated and naive…and too stubborn to learn or ask for help.

Everyday before school, my grandma would look me in the eye and say:

“Never tell anyone how we live. You will be taken away from us.”

Well, I’m telling now. Sorry, grandma.

Here’s something even more horrendous—

My grandma STILL LIVES THERE. At 74 years old. She refuses to leave no matter how much we’ve tried to help. It breaks my damn heart. In winters nowadays, she bounces staying at different houses within the family on extremely cold days, but still. It makes me sick.

I was lucky. In 2016, after experiencing hypothermia twice and nearly dying, I said enough was enough. I took to the internet and begged for help. I had a decent sized following on Twitter at the time since I was an avid poster of artwork, and thanks to the incredible, lovely, generous followers and friends of mine, they helped me raise over $2000 in donations to a GoFundMe campaign to help me escape that house so I could pursue my art. And, you know, actually stay alive.

Thinking back to that, $2000 almost seems like nothing. A month or two’s rent at best in today’s world, but back then it was everything and I made a full jump out of that house and into a small, dinky little apartment in town. Small and dinky, but it had water, a working kitchen sink, a shower, and, oh my goodness, HEAT?!

Winter 2016-2017 was the first winter I had experienced in a warm home in years. I can remember watching a blanket of snow covering the entirety of town from the comfort of my bedroom window and feeling warm. My dog and two cats with me, snuggled in my bed together, completely warm. Safe and warm. Warm warm warm.

I cried. Hard.

It was bliss.

My artwork took off and I began working on a webcomic series called Gwendy & Ghost (which as of right now is in hiatus since I’m in the thick of motherhood with two little babies). My artwork kept me afloat for years, and by golly, it still does.

Here I am now, age 34, in the most wonderful home I have ever lived in. I have a husband and two beautiful babies.

It was hard work getting here.

I wake up everyday in complete awe of what I have built.

As type this out on my phone, nap trapped by my baby boy passed out after a good booby-meal, I see soft snowflakes falling and the cold wind gently wriggling the bare trees out the window. I know it’s blistering cold out there right now and all I can think is…

I no longer dread seeing the snow. It fills me with that childlike wonder I used to have before the chaos. That deep pit of despair in my stomach when seeing snow, or even the sheer mention of winter, is gone. Finally.

I’m as warm as can be.

And I vow to make our home a safe haven for my kids, never letting them go cold or hungry. Never ever.

Our home will always be a warm sanctuary in winter.

So…

Let it snow.