When I first began Marshmallow Ranch, it was just a little Facebook page promoting jewelry I made in my art studio. I networked part of the day to build an audience, and worked the rest of the day in my studio upstairs. Mr. Virgo was working at the Ritz Carlton in Aspen, and I was still working part time as a Clinical Pharmaceutical Research Coordinator. I slowly but surely gained followers and shipped jewelry out several days a week, when the unthinkable happened and my world crashed down around me.

After my husband’s untimely death, I bought my first camper and took off for three months in the wilderness and backroads of Colorado. I loved it, I sold my house, I hit the road, and made it to West Virginia. Somewhere around two years of writing here on Facebook, I thought maybe I should have a separate website. But, for one reason or another, I just didn’t follow through with that idea until December 2016.

Ever since the day my website went live, I’ve had a link from my FB posts over to my website. Some don’t mind it…others hate it…but it’s the only way to build a social media platform. And, if you want to have any kind of standing with a publisher, that’s one of the first things they look for. I do want to get my book(s) published one of these days, so that became important to me.

That left me with a dilemma. What to do with all that writing that sat alone over on Facebook?

For one thing, sometime in 2017, Mr. FixIt shows up and my writing started to change its timbre. Time, healing, and new love set my feet in a new direction and not every piece I wrote was about grief anymore. Which isn’t a BAD thing. It’s the natural progression of healing, and I am glad I’ve been able to demonstrate the hope of a healing heart. But what about all those people who came down this road after me? While they are in their first and second and even third years of grief, the last thing they want to read is all the happy stuff I write about.

I want the newly bereaved to have ready access to the parts of my grief that more closely match what they’re currently going through. The website is great because there is a list of months and years so you can read along chronologically. However, that meant I had to hand copy four years worth of blog posts from Facebook. No easy task.

I worked on it sporadically whenever I had chunks of time…usually during the snowy months or when I traveled. I knew if I was actually going to finish, I needed to buckle down and force myself to wade through it and get it done. I started just after Thanksgiving 2020, sat down every day in my big red recliner and copied and pasted for hours every day. I don’t think I took more than a day or two off.

Well, last night at 9:35…I finally finished!!! Now, if one were so inclined (and I can’t imagine that they would)…the entire collection of my writing is readily accessible on my website! Huge, HUGE amount of work. I’d love to be able to figure out how many words there are on there. lol It makes me giggle when I remember my mom telling me I had “the gift of gab.” Daughter #2 says I can “talk to a tree.” 

Maybe so…but I still haven’t run out of things to say. I’ll still keep plugging along…till I decide I’ve said enough. I love coming here and talking to you every day. You have become my coffee mates…my sounding board…my creative outlet…my muse. I know pride is a sin…but I think what I’m feeling more is…a sense of great accomplishment. There are now 2,558 posts on my website. If I averaged ~600 words per post, that would be 1,534,800 words!!! 

I think I have a few more left in me. Here’s to learning and growing and exploring and living and…writing!

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“But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.””

2 Chronicles 15:7 NIV