Settling Into Who I Am At 67 And The Changes I Need To Make To Be Well And Whole…

This is a very hard post to write and one that I’ve put off for some time but the time has come and I need to share all of this now. I’m not going anywhere, nor shutting down this site, and I will be writing and making art and doing my work. I will be sharing my “Spirit Messages” on my mailing list and across social media as a gift from the heart, but I will be blogging here very irregularly. Being a disabled senior citizen whose disability has gotten markedly worse over the last 2 years, and I have taken very bad falls so that I can’t even work in my garden, and there have been many other losses due to increasing mobility issues, I have to make some changes. I am gardening in a few pots on my deck and getting inexpensive plant lights to grow more plants inside, and seeing other ways to widen my world within these 4 walls so to speak. But I also live, as you know, with ongoing mental health issues, and am agoraphobic which has gotten worse, so that my energy is very limited, and I have decided to use the energy that I have to do the work that I can which will almost entirely be shared with my Patrons at Patreon only. Let me explain why.

I love blogging. I have been “blogging” for 25 years before blogging was really “a thing.” I had a website and I wrote a new post every day which I manually put on the front of the website. When actual blogging platforms came along I was thrilled and I had several blogs on Blogger. This one, “Maitri’s Heart,” started on Blogger in 2007 but a few years in it was getting so big it needed a new home, and at the time I was trying to start a home business for much needed income. I started my business, a mentoring business, which did really well, for ONE month, because the next month my house burned down, all of my office equipment, almost everything in the house, all lost, including my 4 beloved parrots that I had handraised and had from babies for 20 years. I was devastated, and along with all the physical losses the last of my financial resources were gone. The insurance company put me up in a rental for 8 months while they rebuilt the house which they could only do because it is a brick house on a concrete slab but everything else was gone, all the way up through the roof. Luckily I got my dogs and I out the back but I couldn’t get to the parrots. I tried and tried and tried to rebuild some kind of business but with the mental health challenges I already lived with all the losses of the fire took me down so hard I could barely function.

Gradually I began drawing and painting again, I continued to blog through the whole journey, but I could barely get through the days I was suffering and struggling so much. And I had lost all my resources. My daughter helped me over several months piece together a life of social services, government programs that would provide free therapy, food stamps and so on, none of which I ever imagined I would need to use in my life and I felt humiliated, and ashamed, and yet very grateful to have any help at all.

I tried, I tried my best, and then we were hit by 3 hurricanes in 3 years and there was terrible destruction here after Hurricane Florence in September 2018, and more destruction in hurricanes in the next 2 years. Also in 2018 I lost all 3 of my beloved senior pugs and finally I didn’t think I could survive any longer. But then in January 2019 a tiny little one-eyed girl came into my life and she is the love of my life and brought me back TO life. And then I started drawing and painting Maisie and things picked up a little for me emotionally but the years of losses and tragedies took a more terrible toll than I realized. In the summer of 2019 I took a bad fall in my garden and couldn’t get up. It was over half an hour that I laid in the dirt calling everyone I could and I couldn’t get anyone. Thank God for my cell phone. I finally reached an elderly neighbor and he and his wife came and it took them a very long time to get me up. God bless them they tried everything but that was when I knew something terrible was happening. That month I got the “Fall Pendant” that I have to wear 24/7 to call for help if I need it because I live alone and because of the nature of my disability, due to breaking both feet several times, once falling down a staircase and shattering both feet (That’s what the ER doctor said, he said, “Honey, you didn’t break your feet, you shattered them.” I was in 2 casts for a long time, in a wheelchair, finally a walker but when I went to crutches I fell and broke one of my feet again. I had a large tumor in one foot that had to be operated on and it was bad and I couldn’t walk for another year, and the icing on the cake was becoming pre-diabetic which caused such serious neuropathy in my feet the foot doctor said, “On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst, your feet are at least an 8, you have ‘at risk’ feet.” The truth is I can barely feel them. At risk feet indeed, and my life would never be the same again. And this disability has caused so many losses, imagine not being able to walk around with or babysit your new grandbaby because you’d be at risk of falling with her. Not being able to go to the beach, even just for a stroll, because you can’t walk on sand, not being able to do so many things. And I have fallen in my house several times and could barely get up. Since my feet don’t really work there is no way for me to pull myself up if I am down. And then a little over a month ago I fell again in the garden, had to push the button and the EMT’s had to come to get me up and into the house. It was mortifying and terrifying and I plunged into a terrible depression as I could hear more doors slamming shut all around me, more losses, and less physical energy because everything is just such an effort.

I am not giving up, I am a survivor and I have survived much throughout my whole life, and I will go on now as best I can, but the truth is I have to be realistic about what all of this means. On any given day I have just so much energy. And for years I have been blogging which is not something you get paid for. A year ago, September 1, 2020 I opened a Patreon page as I had been advised to by many for 3 years but I was afraid. Being bipolar and with limited energy I was afraid that I would start it and not be able to keep up, but I have, and I am so proud, I have just started my second year, and my Patrons have not only supported me financially but in so many other ways, so much love and kindness and I finally realized, at 67 and physically disabled and living with mental health issues and now only living on social security I am struggling and I can no longer work at regular blogging which I don’t get paid for. My patrons get a lot of content on Patreon, nearly daily blogs which I call “Notes From Maitri,” periodic videos, free downloads of my art, they are able to see and know everything I do, both my life here at Dragonfly Cottage with my animals and what gardening I can do, my philosophies about aging with grace (and sometimes not!), about still living a life of possibilities even with limitations, they hear everything, I write them nearly daily when I am afraid, depressed, joyful, as I develop new creative ideas, as I write my book which I am sharing with them, and so much more. Inotherwords they get a LOT of content for as little as $5 a month. And recently, when I got my social security, I lost my food benefits even though I don’t get a lot from social security I was literally just dollars over the line that caused me to lose it, the money I get from Patreon buys my groceries. I hate to be so blunt, but I want you to realize — and this is very hard for me — that I am not some money-grubbing internet salesy person, I am a disabled senior citizen who has given a lot for a long time for free and now can no longer do that. I don’t have the energy. I am giving a world of content to my Patrons, but henceforth you will have to be a Patron to get it.

I am sorry that it has come to this and I know some people can’t even afford $5 a month. But I have broken my Patreon down to 3 tiers (That is different pledge levels with different content) and I recently combined the first and second tier to one tier because I wanted EVERYONE to get EVERYTHING I do so now the first tier is the combination of 2 tiers and on a sliding scale from $5-$24. The second tier is the Zoom tier where we have 2 live Zoom Meetings a Month ($25). The third tier, on a very limited basis, is for people who want to work with me 1 on 1 ($75). This is very limited due to time and energy and there are only 6 spots left. I am giving my whole heart and soul to my Patrons. They are my supporters, my tribe, my family, and I love them dearly. And only they, henceforth, will receive all of what I do online.

I will be on social media on a very limited basis, mainly on Instagram. But I have to concentrate on taking care of myself physically, daily working at managing my mental health which is a real challenge as I have several diagnoses and am also bipolar, I am in therapy weekly and have a med manager, and as I am more and more agoraphobic I am learning to make the biggest and best life that I can, right here, at Dragonfly Cottage.

I am not complaining about anything. I am actually full of hope and most days full of joy and I share everything with my Patrons. So here comes the hard part and I am trembling as I write this but I am going to ask you this…. If you have followed me for some time, love the blog posts, and other things that I share and do, would you please consider joining Patreon? You can do so for as little as $5 a month, I would so deeply appreciate it, it would help me more than you could possibly know, and it will pretty much be the only way you will see my content, not because I don’t want to offer it but because my energy is so limited I can and will offer it only to the people who are willing to support me through Patreon. I need the support, I have much to offer, and I hope that matters.

I love you all so dearly, appreciate all the years you have come here to read my blog, but I need your help now if you are able to. Please visit Patreon to see what it’s all about, what the tiers are, what you get and so on. I was afraid to do it, and now it is saving me, but I need many more Patrons and when we hit 100 Patrons I will be able to open a community platform where Patrons can share their work, websites, blogs, Etsy shops and whatever else they do. The community aspect has been very important to me since the beginning and it is something I am eager to do. Thank you for everything, and for bearing with me as I learn how to navigate these challenging and often scary waters of old age, disability, living with mental illness and more, my Patrons have given me hope, and I will be eternally grateful.