My Absence

I can't believe that my last post on the blog was December 1st 2014. I used to look forward to blogging on a daily basis but at some point in November my posts were dropping off. This was due to the fact that my mother was in the hospital whilst the doctors were trying to figure out what was causing her to need transfusions all the time. Then we had our answer, she had stage 4 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Not what we wanted to hear, obviously. However, my mother had a wonderful doctor looking after her who believed because of my mother's strong constitution and how sturdy of a woman she was that she had an extremely positive outlook on my mom's prognosis and Chemo was scheduled to begin in the first week of December. Unfortunately, my mom who has always been susceptible to pneumonia and the day after seeing her doctor and receiving her chemo schedule she was in the hospital on a respirator where she quickly went down hill. On December 7th at 8:32 p.m. surrounded by our family my mother was taken off life support and the single greatest person I have ever known and the woman I had the privilege of calling Mama for 24 years passed away at age 60.  Needless to say, my world along with my siblings, and father's worlds blew apart and were irrecovably changed. Suddenly the one who was holding us all together was gone and me being the youngest of my siblings was suddenly jettisoned into an existence I didn't know how to cope with and still don't. Which is why I've taken this time off from blogging. I've read 12 books since my mother died. The one thing that I've always been to self medicate with, my reading no longer held any joy for me. I used to seek comfort amongst the pages of my books or here in the book blogging community but until about a week ago I didn't even consider coming back. Darren AKA Mr. Turning the Pages has had to talk me off the ledge many times these last few months since I wanted to delete Turning the Pages. However, since I'm now living in a new place I've been coming back to myself and thus I've been wanting to bring the blog back to life. My mama while she never read my blog supported it wholeheartedly and would have been so pissed to know I stopped doing what I love just because I was sad over losing her. She wouldn't have stood for it and that's why I'm back because my Mama is probably giving me hell for being so foolish. I'm not saying that Turning the Pages will be back at full capacity right away, I might just start with meme's and work my way back into reviewing but I am back and I'm glad to be back and I can only hope that you'll all welcome me back as warmly as you welcomed me when I began this bookish journey and thank you for your patience.

Kimberly