The holidays are just around the corner. I want to take this moment to thank you all for the love and support you have given me these last two years. So much has happened it is almost hard to keep track.

First, it started off with bravery and strength. I stepped out into the world and delivered He Was A Boy Who Smiled. Despite being silenced for so many years and not believed, I was able to step through that and tell my story about surviving abuse, both at home and at school. This brave step was followed by another one after releasing the second book in the series.

Then I started to release poetry and short stories. All of which I kept being told wouldn’t sell. I’d just be a novelty item. No one would ever see anything that I was doing as a commercial success. But here we are at my website and I haven’t stopped publishing and selling.

But I wasn’t doing any of these things to become a commercial success. I wasn’t writing to play a game. I was writing to change it.

I was able to do all this because of my husband, Joel. I wasn’t naive not to understand that quitting teaching because of homophobia and abuse wasn’t going to come with consequences and sacrifice. Saving for a home was now on hold. Going to trips to America were pushed back further. But I was able to buy out my car and get me completely out of debt.

Then illness hit. Depression got the better of me and I spiralled out of control. Soon the savings was gone. Joel was stepping up and working full time. Things hit rock bottom and we were climbing our way back. And we almost did that. Joel was getting promotions at work. I was publishing books and handling my illness. We truly felt we were on the right path.

Then Joel lost his job. His own honesty about his mental illness to his workplace backfired and they began to treat him worse and worse. Until a month before the Christmas holidays, they fired him. I wasn’t making enough money to carry us. Things were happening for me but they were happening slowly and gradually. Joel fell and he fell hard.

We are still picking up the pieces and thanks to the donations given to us through Ko-Fi, we were able to have the rest of the year as a reprieve to paying for rent. We covered the utilities.

So here I am, grateful for everything. Sure, I don’t know what the New Year holds for us. I have no idea how we are going to pay for Rent in January. I don’t know what job we are going to get next, but we will keep going. Because despite it all, we have you, my readers, fans and friends. I have my writing. We can’t afford a ton of presents. Our food is rice and pasta or from a local charity that has food baskets. We might have to sell some sentimental items to get by, but in the end, Joel and I have each other.

And we say this every time, but it’s the truth: We a team.