Hello and Welcome,This is the first Sacred Story Kits LLC newsletter. What a journey it has been to been to come to this very moment. I am overwhelmed by blessings, not least of which is that I get to write this from my couch in pajamas. If you’re getting this newsletter you met us at a market recently or found us via a Facebook share, and I’m so glad you’re here. I want to share a snippet of my story, because if you visit our webpage our about page is focused on the professional, but if you know me personally you know that’s not what got me here. It’s also not because I have neurodivergent kids (I do) or because I know what I’m doing (I don’t). Just over 1 year ago, I took a leave from my career job as a Calcasieu elementary school counselor. My work with CPSB was the second longest relationship of my life, just short of the one I have with Ryan! When my leave began, I had lost my ability to write, to speak in full coherent sentences, to prioritize tasks, and even for a while to create new memories. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but as a person who has always been filled with words it was terrifying. It has been a long journey back from what I’ve now learned was. most likely autistic burnout. That’s something I wasn’t really familiar with, so I’ll link to an article here and the original research study, if you’re interested in learning more about that. In simple terms, it’s when your life demands have overwhelmed your capacity for so long you literally cannot push through one second more. It was an experience that was internally awful and also hard to communicate to the people around me who had been seeing me perform at a high level the entire time they’d known me. For some individuals, skill loss is permanent, and as the months passed I tried to make my peace with that possibility. I retired from CPSB in a quiet, non-celebratory way that didn’t match my life plans at all. I told a friend, “Some people say God opens a window, but to me it feels like He opened the front door, kicked me out on the stoop, said ‘Git!!’, and locked the door behind me.” It’s funny though, how sometimes what we would never choose moves us into places we would never take ourselves. Thankfully most of my skills, especially my ability to speak and write, did return. I’m learning to live in new ways and to protect my capacity like a mama bear watching out for her cub. It feels slow, and in many ways small, but as a friend texted last week The best moments in life are made up of ordinary occurrences that do not seem to be major at the time.
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