Hello Again, and Thank You

There are two simple things I want to say in this blog post; Hello and thank you. Hello you wonderful readers and followers of my blog, who I basically deserted back in October. Hello to all the brands and PRs who still may not have a clue where I’d gone. Hello to the new followers and amazing people who I have met both online and offline since my world turned upside down. I want to say thank you to all of you. Thank you for being so patient and supportive. Thank you for all your kind comments, thoughtful gestures and ‘inspirational memes’ to get me through. Most of all, thank you for coming back to my blog now that I’ve cleared off the cobwebs!

So much has happened since our baby boy Theo was born premature on 30th October 2018, an extraordinary 15 weeks before his due date. It’s so hard to know where to begin. In those early weeks we had to take things an hour at a time, then a day at a time. It was all consuming, emotionally exhausting and my toughest challenge yet. At the time, there was no capacity left in my brain to share any content about what was going on. We were told the first weeks would be ‘touch and go’ and we knew that bringing Theo home was far from guaranteed. It was too raw, too traumatic to even figure out how to put in to words for the online world. So I basically disappeared from the internet. It was my coping mechanism. It was what I needed to do to survive.

Because of this, a very significant part of my life is now missing from the internet. It’s a complex journey that has so many different chapters and layers that its hard to know where to begin. I am planning a series of blog posts which will reflect in more detail about everything we’ve been through, including my birth story and what it’s like to have a baby in neonatal intensive care. I appreciate this type of content is far from travel-related, but just give me time. They are personal to me and my blog will always evolve with me. But for now, I am just here to say hello and thank you, which makes this post much less scary to do.

Although I haven’t been blogging, I have been sharing different aspects of our journey on Instagram in a ‘microblogging’ format. I’ve covered things such as introducing Theo, my breastfeeding journey, my mental health, Theo’s development as a premature baby and future plans for The Travelista. Writing these posts have felt like a good way to reflect and record everything that has happened, and have been a way to dip my toe back into regular online posts.

The photos in this blog post are the ‘after’ ones. We just look like a typical new family, out and about. I guess you’d have no idea what the 3 of us had been through in order to get to that moment the photo was taken. That’s the funny thing about life isn’t it? You have no idea what journeys people have been on to get to where they are now. We have the ‘before’ photos. Plenty of them. When put together they tell the most incredible visual story of Theo’s journey, but right now, it’s not something I am ready to share.

So once again, hello and thank you. I’m still here. I’m still Jess. I’m still a woman with my own identity. I still have a voice. I’m still The Travelista, but I am also now a Mum who is embarking on the entirely new adventure that is Motherhood. So far there have been enough twists and turns to last me a life time, but I’ve got a feeling there will be plenty more in store. I hope you all come along for the bumpy ride.

Follow me on Instagram @thetravelista for more microblogging

Jess x