So, on January 23rd my dad passed away.

I'm laying in bed and I get a chat call request from my cousin in Ontario. Normally, we text back and forth, so for her to need to call me I knew something was up. Sure enough.

Now, I hadn't spoken to my sister in a couple of years. Not since things went completely to shit when my mother's ashes were taken to the High Farm and spread there alongside Opa, Oma, and Uncle Peter.

Anyhow, the first thing I do when I get off the call with my cousin is text my sister. My cousin had said that my sister was not ready for phone calls, so I figured a text would not go astray to at least let her know that despite all the shit, that I was still there for her. She told me that it was okay to call her.

In that one phone call alone we managed to bury a lot of the past hurt and anger that was between us. And I promised her that as soon as my credit card showed up that I'd be on the first plane I could book. That call was on a Thursday, my credit card arrived the following Monday, and I had booked flights that would get me into Ontario on the Tuesday.

It was a MUCH needed trip for both of us. And I am so thankful that my boss and the rest of the team were understanding about me needing to do this without much notice. Especially because it's not often I do something like this.

I honestly didn't want to leave Ontario, but I couldn't abandon all my stuff in Newfoundland. And I had to make sure that my daughter would be okay with me eventually moving to Ontario. Not to mention that I now have to pay off a credit card that has been too easy to use...that's another story for another time!

I do wish that I had made more of an effort to stay in touch with my dad and sister after my mother passed, but I was too worried that the bullshit and lies that my mother had spread for entirely too many years had sunk in and couldn't be changed. But the past is in the past and can't be changed now. But that doesn't mean that my sister and I couldn't rebuild our relationship.

I swear I've spoken to my sister more in the past several weeks than I had in the past 18 years since I moved to NL in the first place! But it's what we need, especially as we move forward with whatever our relationship is meant to be.

Since my dad passed, I have realized that I'm having a much harder time dealing with his death than I would ever have expected. I definitely wasn't like this when my mother passed. So, after breaking down in my doctor's office a week ago, my doctor put in a referral for bereavement counseling...and during my intake phone call this past Thursday, it was decided that I needed trauma counseling way more. My grief over my dad passing is tied in with my childhood trauma, or so we discovered during that call. So, I'm just waiting on the letter that puts me into 30 weeks of trauma counseling on Mondays. Woo?

I know I need this counseling so I can move past so much of the shit that I realized I haven't dealt with, even with the years of counseling I had when I was a teenager. That counseling was mainly to deal with my life circumstances during that time, dealing with a controlling narcissist mother and how to not let myself be completely ripped apart. Especially as I became a parent myself. This trauma counseling will deal with the years of mental, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that I was forced to endure for entirely too many years. I guess it's better late than never.

But on that note, I need to crawl into bed. I'm exhausted after being sicks for the past couple of weeks, doing music for a dance last night, and still managing to work during all of this since I got back from Ontario.

*snore*