While I didn’t intend for there to be a two year gap between this post and my last…life happens. To say that a lot of life happened for me would be an understatement and I’m finally coming up for air. I had a hard time letting The Scheffette sit idle this whole time but I did not have the desire or bandwidth to invest any time or energy into it, until now.

You may also have noticed that The Scheffette received a makeover. It was a labour of love and I’m so thrilled to be able to re-launch with a website that I feel like represents where I’m at and who I am now. And who am I now? So much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same, but at my core I’m still me. Just refined. I learned how to say ‘no’. I took stock of my priorities and where I was putting my time and energy. I stopped certain things and started others. And above all else, I chose me. I chose my family. I chose to stop over-extending myself in ways that no longer served me.

I have so much that I want to say and fill you in on from the past two years. I don’t even know where to begin, but I feel a renewed sense of joy when I think about writing. A joy that I haven’t had in…well two years.

Did my neurological conditions stop? No. Did they improve? Kind of. With the help of many types of injections and pharmaceuticals. But the point is, even though I’m still dealing with chronic illness I’ve figured out how to cope and where it fits into my life. I’ve stopped letting it control me (to the extent that I’m able…because I don’t know if you’ve tried just telling a cluster headache to go away, but I can tell you that it doesn’t listen!)

I’ve also become a mum to my beautiful son-shine, Eli. I can hardly believe that it’s almost been five months since he was born. Becoming a mother has been the single greatest joy that I’ve experienced in my life and it was also the most unexpected joy.

The last time that I wrote a post for The Scheffette I was in a very different place. What I didn’t know was just how different it would end up being shortly thereafter. My last few posts of the Scheffette detailed the difficult time I was having with migraines, and what ensued after my last post in April 2024? A health journey that turned my life upside down. It turns out that life wanted to throw me a curve ball and throw cluster headaches and occipital neuralgia in the mix, but that story is one for a different day and a different post.

It’s funny because I’m sitting here asking myself ‘what do you write as your very first post back after a two year absence?’ On one hand I wanted it to be profound, a real zinger for the first one back; but I’ve always struggled to find the perfect topic when I was looking for one. Then I thought to myself, maybe I just go with what I know and start typing. See where it takes me.

This post feels different for me because I’m writing it in the before-my-son-wakes-up and the after-my-son-goes-to-bed hours. This is obviously something new for me. I don’t just have infinite time to sit down and write when the mood strikes like I used to. That in and of itself will be difficult – but somehow I don’t think that I will mind. In fact, as I was in the middle of this post, my son woke up and needed to be fed and while I used to think that would completely derail my thought process and my motivation, my newly wired mum-brain just allowed me to press pause, contemplate in the background while I was feeding him, and then sit right back down and continue. That sort of blows my mind because anyone with ADHD knows that usually once that thought train is derailed, that train isn’t coming back into the station, at least not right away.

There are so many things that I thought would be true about myself if I ever became a mother. In fact, my anxiety let me believe a lot of things that didn’t end up being true. I was worried about the stereotypical things that people talk about like never having a hot coffee again or having a baby that never stopped crying. But I was also worried about deeper things like resenting my baby, not bonding with him, or not being naturally nurturing. I was never someone who was set on having children – in fact for a very long time I was pretty firmly in the ‘no’ camp; but somewhere along the way that changed. And even though it changed, I still always had this worry because you just never know what kind of child you will get and what life will bring. The thing that people with anxiety love the most? Uncertainty. The thing that having a child brings a lot of? Uncertainty.

However, I was so wrong on all of it. Right from the moment that I met my son I was fortunate to have been blessed with the type of love-at-first-sight euphoria that moms talk about. Golden hour was truly a golden hour and I had never known the type of love that I felt for my son in that moment. And not only my son, but also my husband. It was truly special. It was like this switch flipped inside me. Over the days, weeks, and now months that have followed I still catch myself just looking at him in awe of the fact that my husband and I made him. That he is this perfect little combination of the two of us. That I had nurtured and constructed this little human inside of me for the preceding nine months. That he was just so perfect in every way. Awe is really the only word that I can think to use to describe it.

Suffice to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed the past five months and I have a feeling that I am really going to enjoy all of the adventures that this next chapter of my life will hold.

I am also really looking forward to the next chapter of The Scheffette and all of the adventures that will bring. So if you’re new here: welcome; and if you’re a returning reader: thank you!