Getting Personal

When recording one's life onto pretty pages filled with beautiful papers and fun embellishments the tendency is to document the fun/good times and ignore the ugly/bad times.   While I don't feel that every dirty little secret/severe illness/emotional trauma needs to be recorded in extreme detail I do feel like it is my responsibility to my children/grandchildren to at least make reference to our life's downs as well as our ups.  (I did this with my CRMO layout.  It's just not possible to accurately document the anguish we felt during those few months but I felt it was important that I acknowledge that period of time.)

Many of you are already aware of this but some of you are not.  I co-own a scrapbooking website with two very good friends, Catherine (Idaho), and Lynne (Colorado).  For many years now we have shared stories of our children and our lives though forums (chat) and web galleries (scrapbook layouts) with 50 dear friends, all in the private setting of our site.  Catherine and Lynne were privy to the information in my layout below but others reading here were not. No doubt there was a lot of speculation as to just what happened to me in 2009-2010 when I virtually disappeared off the site.  I thank Catherine and Lynne for taking up my slack and covering for me.  It was a dark time when creating layouts and mindless chatter with online friends was just not possible for me.

I created this page as part of the Sept. LOAD.  The prompt was to document an ending.  I deleted the journaling when I uploaded it into the LOAD gallery but have decided to share it with you all here.

I see no need to record all of the heartbreaking details so I've decided to let this layout speak for the year that Randy and I were apart. We've been back together for well over a year now and it thrills me to say that we've never been happier.   I do plan to create a follow-up page sometime in the near future but I envision it being much like this one...short and to the point.

The ironic thing about this layout is that, while it is not the most pleasant subject to discuss, it is one of my all time favorite pages with respect to color/photos/design.  Maybe it was meant to be another important part of the healing process.

PS - For anyone interested, our website is PlaygroundofMemories.com.  If you're interested in joining us, please register so that you can view the entire site.