So much has happened in the last 10 years. Where to begin?!
Let's start when things changed so dramatically that I wasn't sure I was going to survive the devastation of my shattered heart.
June 30, 2018, at 8:09 pm I received a phone call that hardly seemed real at the time. I thought someone was playing a really horrible practical joke on me and my husband, but slowly the reality of the situation revealed that it wasn't a joke. My youngest child, my miracle, my promise that I would have a friend for the rest of my life, had suddenly died in her home. Suicide is a strange thing. It is a finality for those who walk down that path, an end to the pain they are experiencing in their life. It is rarely recognized however, that it is just the beginning of a painful journey for those who are left behind. The questions are unanswerable. The absence is acutely felt, and then chronically accepted. The void left in the heart of beloved family members, both genetic and chosen family, is something that can never be filled by any other person.
I took three months off work, this was the earliest that I could even contemplate spending time in public (I had a customer service position at the time, in a busy coffee shop). Even then, I would see people who would remind me of my youngest daughter, and the tears would start falling without warning. By the middle of October that year, I had made the decision that I could no longer live in the city where she had died, and started to take steps to move away, far away. I applied for and was offered a position at a long term care facility in Northern Ontario. I just needed to figure out the logistics of where I was going to live when I got there. My brother lived in that area, so if necessary I could stay with him and his girlfriend. I needed to figure out what I would take with me, as my husband and son wouldn't be joining me in my move. It was decided that I would start my new position at the beginning of December that year. The next few weeks went by the same as all the previous weeks had, since we learned of our daughter's death, in a virtual blur. Plans were made for my brother to drive down, after renting a trailer, to pick up the belongings I was going to move with. An apartment was secured, with my brother's help, lease signed, and keys picked up. I was ready to start my new life, and get used to living my new normal.
For the next three and a half months, I lived alone and worked in my new job. Taking the odd weekend to travel back down to southern Ontario to visit my husband and son. We discussed the plans to have my husband join me, but unless he stopped drinking as much as he was, those plans would never come to pass. He had taken to drinking more and more after losing our daughter, and with the drinking were periods of extreme anger and violence that I couldn't live with any longer. He assured me that he would stop drinking, so we started working toward moving him north. In March 2019 he joined me in my small apartment in northern Ontario and started looking for work.
We still had patches of time where I questioned whether moving him north had been the best thing to do. The drinking and anger hadn't changed, and I didn't want to live like that any longer. Finally in May, I told him that he had to stop drinking all together, or he would have to find another place to live. I explained that I didn't want to continue to watch him kill himself slowly, by finding the bottom of a bottle every night. I told him that he needed to make a choice, either he could stop drinking and stay, or he would have to leave if he chose to keep drinking. He chose to stay. Now, he hasn't stayed completely sober since then, but he hasn't got angry and violent when drunk since.
In June 2020, my husband started a Facebook group called The Flashlight Movement, where the purpose of the group is to raise awareness to mental health challenges, and to shine a light on it. The premise is that a single flashlight doesn't give off a lot of light, but ten flashlights does, one hundred flashlights is even better. Each flashlight is to let those who have mental health challenges know that they are not alone, and there is always someone there who is willing to listen.
At the end of October 2020 we moved from our small apartment in northern Ontario, to my parents home just outside North Bay, Ontario. Jon took time to heal his soul after losing our girl, before looking for work. We both needed this time. He needed time to figure out how his life would be, the paths he needed to take, without his beloved youngest daughter. I needed time to heal from the trauma of living with a man who would routinely turn to alcohol to deal with his problems. After I figured that out, I then needed time to figure out my own "new normal".
From the summer of 2020, until sometime in autumn, I was falling further and further into a deep depression. All I wanted was to be with my daughter. All of my other kids had lives of their own, and were living them without me for the most part. Oh, sure, I would talk to them every so often, but I didn't feel like I was a valuable part of their lives. Jon's older children had made it completely clear that they merely tolerated me, but really didn't want me to be a part of their lives. Then I remembered ...
When Kimi was about 15, she had asked me to learn how to make soap with her. Money and time were both a challenge at the time, so we put the idea aside, until such time when both money and time were a little less of an issue. In November 2020, this was brought to mind, by a "recommended" YouTube video, where someone was making soap. I started watching more and more soap making videos, until I was comfortable enough to attempt to make my own batch of soap. I made the decision that I wasn't going to go into 2021 without having made a batch of soap. So, December 31, 2020 I made my first batch of soap.
In those first weeks, I made batch after batch of soap. I made mistakes, gained experience, and went through the process of troubleshooting problems as they cropped up. In the period of about four months, I had enough experience, after making something like sixty batches of soap, to be able to feel completely confident that I could make soap making a business.
Dutch Dragonfly was born in April 2021. Starting off with simple body soaps, then expanding to beard oil and beard balm, I was determined to do what was necessary to make this a successful venture. I needed this business, and I needed to do it for Kimi.
Between April 2021 and today, the business has been steadily growing. Product lines have increased. There is now a full main line collection of 10 scents, complete with a body soap, facial soap, shampoo bar, solid conditioner, and hand lotion. We have a full beard collection with a shampoo, beard oil and beard balm. There is a shave soap and after shave conditioner. Seven lip balm flavours, deodorant, bath bombs, baby soap, bubble bath powder. We are looking at formulating other products as well, and have a couple currently in the testing phase.
As the business has grown, I have found my own sense of healing. The scars will always be there, my heart was shattered into millions of pieces, but it has found a new reason to beat. For the first time in over four years, I am excited to see where things are going to go in my life, and how things will transpire.
If you have made it this far in my story, I want to thank you for reading, hearing my heart. You are appreciated more than you know. Please send me a message if you wish, and let me know what you think.
God bless, and take care of yourself.
