Whether or not you’ve noticed, my online spaces have sat mostly dormant for the last six months or so with the exception of a few, sporadic posts.

There’s a reason for that.

After our little family relocated to Raleigh in June 2020, I encountered some depression and anxiety — that I dealt with silently — as a new mom trying to navigate working full-time from home with a baby during a pandemic in a new city with absolutely zero “village” to call upon. And even if we did have friends and family close by to help, the last year has still been spent living with COVID restrictions. Justin and I have been very, very careful about who we’ve been around out of fear of one or both of us becoming ill and leaving Jack with no one to care for him. That alone has been enough to send me into a legitimate panic attack on more than one occasion. Don’t even get me started on my fear of Jack getting sick. 

There were weeks where I didn’t leave the house at all, and staring at the same walls of our rental for days left me feeling hopeless at times. If you’re a close friend then you’ve heard me lament about how the rental we lived in was detrimental to my mental health. For nine months I felt unsettled; like I was living in a dark cave, slowly trying to claw my way out each day.

The daily balance of motherhood, home, work, and being a wife has been impossible in the uncertain and unprecedented times we live in. I can’t do all of these things and do them well all in one day — on the days I feel like a great mom, my work suffers and on the days I rock at my job, I feel like a shitty parent. And I couldn’t even tell you the last time I felt like I was a good wife. Fact for you — Justin and I haven’t been on a date together, just the two of us, since the day before Jack was born over 13 months ago.

In order to cope and retain some bit of mental capacity, I had to give up something. And, unfortunately, that something was my creative outlet — my blog and the online community that comes with it. Which only further exasperated my feelings of hopelessness and failure. Whether you notice it or not, there is a lot of work that goes into running a blog, and for the last several months I simply haven’t been in a place where I could keep up with it all. So, it had to go.

This resulted in me no longer having anything that was just for me. For the last year I have been serving everyone else around me, and leaving nothing for myself. Essentially, I have been pouring from an empty cup.

There has been light at the end of that dark cave I mentioned earlier, though. Justin and I broke ground on our new home in the Raleigh area in September and we closed on this big, beautiful dream of ours last week (in March, for those who might be reading this in the far off further).

As we settle into our new space, I can’t help but feel a sense of a fresh start and renewed energy. From the moment they handed us our keys, I have felt more like myself. I don’t believe that happiness is waiting at your next home or your next job or whatever next there is; happiness is where you are if you choose to find it. However, the weight of being unsettled for the last nine months has been too heavy for me to carry at times.

Even with boxes everywhere and literal chaos happening all around us, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve looked at Justin since we moved in and told him how genuinely happy I finally feel.

I learned from our old home in Kannapolis — the house we sold before moving to Raleigh last summer — that I thrive when I have home projects to work on. Dreaming up spaces and bringing them to life fills my cup, and I am so excited to get back to that life; to have that part of ME back. And, of course, to document all of those good times here on Dammit, Hali.

As I start jumping into DIYs and really making this house a reflection of us, you can expect to see more and more home content coming from my little corner of the internet.

So, what’s next and what’s changing?

While I have been away from Dammit, Hali and haven’t been posting regularly to my social media accounts, I have done a lot of deep, self reflection on what I truly want to bring to these online spaces and what I want to gain from them; what I am willing to tolerate and what parts of my life I no longer want to share.

  • While I enjoy sharing my motherhood journey and glimpses of our little family, I no longer see these parts of my life as having a top place on my feed. Now that Jack is a toddler and growing into his own unique person, it actually disgusts me to think about people I don’t know seeing photos of my child on the internet, knowing about his personality traits, or drawing their own conclusions about our family based on a 15-second video or single Instagram post. A certain level of privacy and security in this space is more valuable to me than anything. For that reason, what I share about motherhood and our family will be extremely limited.
  • As I’ve spent the last year as a full-time work-from-home mom, I have found a deep appreciation for my time spent disconnected from devices. I encourage anyone reading this to put down their phone — to stop scrolling — and pay attention to the people in their home. Get outside and breathe fresh air. Notice the way your child’s hair lays on their head or the look in their eyes when you smile at them while not holding a devise in your hands. Hold a meaningful conversation with your partner. Set new goals with them. Spark intimacy! I promise you, there is nothing on any app that is more important than the people in your home. I will continue to set time limits to my own social media use in order to prioritize what matters.
  • For me to make this a healthy space for myself, I also have to set firm boundaries. I still want to be in this space, but in a much different way than I have been previously. This goes back to no longer wanting to share Jack with my online community. Specifically, I no longer want to portray myself as a “mommy blogger.” While I am a mom and a blogger, I need those two identities to be separate online. I never want to come across in a way that make it look like I’m using my son to sell a product or service. And, since having Jack I have discovered exactly how easy it is to compare myself to other moms in this space and develop a strong feeling of being “less than.” As a mom on Instagram, I NEVER want to make another woman feel the way I’ve felt by other moms in this app. I have spent a decent amount of time unfollowing accounts who no longer serve me and who, even though unintentional, have made me feel like I’m not doing enough. That’s why I am setting clear, firm boundaries on what I share.
  • Moving forward, the primary focus of Dammit, Hali will be home projects, styling, and DIYs with a little bit of real life mom-bod style peppered in and the occasional, rare glimpse of our family life (when I’m comfortable with it and when it makes sense). I intend to pour myself into creating a home that is a reflection of our family, and I hope you will stick around for all the fun that brings.

Thank you for being here and enjoying this bumpy ride with me.

XXX, Hali