I’m Not Here to Fix You. I’m Here to Hold the Lantern.
Sometimes helping isn’t about having the answers. Sometimes it’s about staying beside someone while they find their own.
Also featured on my Substack @hellbloomhaven
I’m Not Here to Fix You. I’m Here to Hold the Lantern.
Yesterday, I did something that somehow made all of this feel a little more real. I filed for my LLC. I registered with the state for taxes and did all of those very official, very adult business-owner things that make you simultaneously think, Holy smokes, I’m actually doing this and Wait…what am I doing?
So, I guess it’s official. I’m a legitimate business owner now, which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.
The timing is almost comical because my life is anything but calm and organized right now. I’m working part-time at Menards in the evenings, and during the day, I’m building Hellbloom Haven. I’m dealing with some health stuff, so I have appointments there every day for now. I’m working on a few books, writing, creating content, and thinking seriously about hiring someone to help me make video content because I’m beginning to accept that owning a business doesn’t mean I have to, and probably shouldn’t continue to try to, do every single thing myself.
Meanwhile, school for my youngest starts this coming week, so I’ve been sorting clothes, getting supplies, figuring out bus schedules, going to open house, the whole shebang. I’m planning my oldest daughter’s baby shower. We’re preparing for her baby, arriving in December. I’m trying to buy a car, and I’m trying to find a home for my daughters, my soon-to-be granddaughter, and myself.
Somewhere in there, I’m also supposed to figure out how I’m going to afford said car, furnish this currently imaginary house, pay the bills in it, work enough hours to afford everything while still being home to take care of my youngest after school, build a business, be a mother, become a grandmother, and presumably remember to eat lunch occasionally.
So, naturally, this feels like the perfect time to contemplate the meaning of my entire existence. Because that’s apparently how my brain works.
But underneath all of the logistics, lists, and ideas, there has been a question following me around lately:
What do I actually want Hellbloom Haven to become?
It has been almost exactly a year since I woke up to find Heartlight Haven was shut down on Shopify. At the time, it felt like a pretty devastating setback. I poured so much of myself into creating it, and suddenly I faced failure and the choice to let it all disappear or figure out how to rebuild it somewhere else.
So I rebuilt. Well, first I cried, had myself a pity party, complained about how unfair the whole thing was, and felt sorry for myself for a solid couple of weeks lol. Then eventually I sucked it up, put my big girl panties on, and decided that if I had built it once, I could build it again.
So I did.
But somewhere in the process, rebuilding became more than recreating what I’d already had. I realized that if I was going to start again, I wanted to create something that better reflected who I had become and what I actually believed about healing.
Heartlight Haven represented something important to me, but I had changed. My writing had changed. My understanding of healing had changed. My shop shutting down felt like another kick while I was already down, and I wasn’t interested in pretending everything could be wrapped neatly in light and love anymore.
I think for a long time I believed that eventually life would settle down enough for me to really begin. I would heal when things were less stressful. I would make the big decisions when I felt more certain. I would pursue the things I dreamed about when I had more money, more stability, more time, more confidence. There was always some imaginary version of my life just over the horizon where the conditions would finally be right and I would become brave enough, healed enough, or prepared enough to step into it.
But sometimes that season doesn’t come.
Sometimes life doesn’t clear a beautiful path for you. Sometimes one hard thing ends and another begins. Sometimes you’re trying to heal while still dealing with the things that hurt. You’re building while things are falling apart. You’re making decisions without knowing whether they’re the right ones. You’re planting something without any guarantee that it’s going to grow.
At some point, I started realizing that when you’ve lost everything, especially when you’ve had to do it more than once, something changes in you. Starting over is terrifying, but you also know you can survive it because you already have. Eventually, I found myself thinking, What exactly am I so afraid of losing? I’ve watched entire versions of my life fall apart and somehow managed to build something from what was left. There’s a strange kind of freedom in that. When you know you can rebuild, taking the leap doesn’t feel quite as impossible. You start thinking, Well, hell. If I have to start over anyway, I might as well start building a life I actually want.
So I had to learn how to pivot. To adapt. To make the best decision I could with the information I had and adjust when I learned something new. To take the next step without needing to see the entire staircase. To stop treating uncertainty as a sign that I wasn’t ready.
There are dreams we can carry around for years without ever giving them a chance to become anything more than dreams. We imagine the business, the home, the relationship, the book, the life that feels more like ours. We think about it, plan for it, talk ourselves into it and back out again. Sometimes dreaming feels safer because as long as we never begin, we never have to find out whether we can actually do it.
Eventually, though, you have to make a decision. You have to send the application, write the first page, make the phone call, file the paperwork, leave something, begin something, try something, change your mind, and try again. You have to start where you are, because sometimes you aren’t handed a beautiful garden with perfect soil and ideal conditions. Sometimes you’re born in the mud, and sometimes you land there later. Maybe healing isn’t always about finding your way out of the mud before you begin to grow. Maybe sometimes it’s realizing you can put down roots right there. Beautiful things can grow in really difficult places. Sometimes we bloom in hell. That’s how Heartlight Haven became Hellbloom Haven.
Looking back now, there’s something almost fitting about the fact that a place built around the idea of finding our way through difficult things had to be rebuilt from its own ashes.
Hellbloom Haven gave me room for both, the darkness and the light, the grief and the ridiculous laughter that somehow finds us in the middle of it, the falling apart and the rebuilding. The I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing right alongside the I think I’m finally figuring this out.
Over this past year, I’ve created so many different things under that name. I’ve written about trauma, healing, identity, and starting over. I’ve created a trauma education portal, grounding tools and resources. I’ve written letters. I’ve worked on books. I’ve created spaces for reflection, self-discovery, and hope. I’ve experimented. I’ve joined business groups; I’ve changed my mind. I’ve followed ideas simply because something inside me said, Make this, and now that Hellbloom Haven is officially a business, I’ve found myself looking at everything I’ve built and asking a much bigger question:
What am I actually trying to do here?
Maybe I’m Not Supposed to Have the Answers
Making Hellbloom Haven official has forced me to think about all of this a little differently. For a long time, I’ve simply followed the ideas that came to me. If I felt pulled to write something, I wrote it. If I thought of a tool that might help someone, I created it. If I learned something that made my own experiences make more sense, I wanted to share it. There was never some grand plan behind all of it. I was creating what felt meaningful and trusting that somehow, all of those pieces belonged together.
Now I’m starting to look at everything I’ve built and wonder what connects it all. What is the thread running through the writing, the tools, the education, the books, the conversations, and all of the strange little ideas I’ve followed along the way? Who am I in all of this? What do I actually have to offer? How do I want to help people? Most importantly, what do I want someone to find here when they stumble across Hellbloom Haven on a day when life feels particularly heavy?
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that I don’t have a deep desire to be the person standing in front of you with all the answers. That’s not really who I am. I’m honest, sometimes probably more honest than necessary, and I care deeply about people. I don’t like pretending things are okay when they aren’t, and I don’t want to cover difficult things in pretty words just to make them easier to look at. I believe there is hope, but I also believe we can acknowledge when something hurts. I believe in finding the light without pretending the darkness isn’t there. I’ll celebrate the hell out of your wins with you, but I’ll also sit beside you when everything has gone sideways and you have no idea what to do next.
I’m not the person who’s going to push you to do something you don’t feel ready to do. I’ll probably ask you questions, help you look at things from a different angle, and be honest with you when I think you’re being unfair to yourself. I might remind you of something you already know but have temporarily forgotten. What I won’t do is pretend I know your life better than you do.
I’m not the person with the ten-step program promising to transform your life if you just follow it correctly. I’m not going to tell you that if you wake up at five in the morning, drink enough water, meditate every day, heal your inner child, organize your house, set better boundaries, think positively, and follow the perfect morning routine, everything will finally fall into place. Life is messier than that. People are messier than that. I’m messier than that, and I have no interest in pretending otherwise.
There are people who are wonderful at motivating others, creating programs, teaching systems, and helping people move toward specific goals. There is great value in that work, and I deeply respect the people who do it. It’s just not mine right now. I’m starting to realize that it doesn’t need to be. None of us are meant to be everything for everyone.
I sometimes think of people as walking around in invisible team colors. You could call them auras, energy, intuition, or simply that feeling you get around another person. I imagine those colors shifting throughout our lives depending on who we are, what we’re carrying, what we have to offer, and what we need. Somehow, certain people seem able to recognize the colors meant for them. You might be carrying courage during a season when someone else desperately needs to remember their own. Someone might come into your life carrying safety when everything around you feels uncertain. At another point, the color you recognize might be understanding, laughter, hope, honesty, motivation, or simply the presence of someone who knows how to sit quietly beside you.
We don’t always understand why certain people catch our attention or feel strangely familiar, but I like to believe that sometimes we’re recognizing something in them that we need for that particular stretch of the journey. We find our teammates along the way. Some walk with us for years, while others may only be beside us long enough to help us through one particular season. Sometimes, without even realizing it, we’re wearing the colors someone else has been searching for too.
Maybe part of figuring out what Hellbloom Haven is supposed to be has simply been figuring out what colors I carry.
I don’t want to look at someone who is struggling and immediately start searching for the solution. I don’t believe every difficult emotion needs to be reframed, every painful experience needs to become a lesson, or every season of uncertainty needs to become a problem we solve as quickly as possible. Sometimes you don’t need another person telling you what you should do next. Sometimes you need somewhere you can admit that you have absolutely no idea what comes next.
Sometimes you need someone who can sit beside you while you say the things you’ve been afraid to say out loud. Someone who will ask questions without deciding what your answers should be. Someone who can help you pull apart the fear, expectations, responsibilities, old wounds, and other people’s voices until somewhere underneath all of it, you can begin to hear your own again.
That’s the person I recognize myself in. I’m the person people come to when they’re stuck and need to talk something through. I’m the person who will remind you of the things you’ve forgotten about yourself. I want to help you find your voice, trust your instincts, understand yourself a little more deeply, and feel empowered to fight for the life that feels like yours, not because I gave you the answers, but because you found your own.
The more I think about Hellbloom Haven, the more I realize that I don’t want to build a place centered around fixing people. I want to build a place where you can come exactly as you are, with tools, education, resources, and support waiting for you when you’re ready for them. You can arrive confused, grieving, angry, hopeful, exhausted, starting over, completely unsure of yourself, or somewhere between who you used to be and whoever you’re becoming. You don’t have to show up ready to transform your entire life. You can just arrive.
Maybe we’ll find a tool that helps you get through the next ten minutes. Maybe we’ll learn something about trauma or the nervous system that makes what you’re experiencing feel a little less confusing. Maybe you’ll write something, breathe for a minute, read someone else’s story, or be reminded that another human being has stood somewhere similar and made it through. Maybe we’ll talk something through until you can finally hear what you’ve been trying to tell yourself all along. Perhaps we’ll laugh together, cry together, or just sit there staring at each other awkwardly for a while. That’s okay too.
I don’t know what your way forward looks like, and I’m beginning to understand that it’s okay that I don’t. I’m not supposed to. I don’t want to stand outside the darkness yelling directions to you. I’d rather come sit beside you. I can’t promise I’ll know the way out. I can’t promise I have the map, and I certainly can’t promise I can fix whatever brought you there.
What I can do is remind you that the darkness isn’t all there is. I can help you look around. I can listen while you untangle what you’re carrying and figure out which direction feels like yours. I can remind you of your strength when you’ve temporarily forgotten it, and I can remind you that you don’t have to have everything figured out before you’re allowed to take the next step.
I can hold the lantern while you find your way.
Thank You for Being Here
Thank you for taking the time to read this and for being here as Hellbloom Haven continues to grow into whatever it is becoming. If something in these words found you at the right time, I hope you’ll stick around.
You can visit www.hellbloomhaven.com for more writing, tools, resources, and support for the messy parts of being human. I also created a free Survival Guide for Hard Days, filled with simple grounding exercises, reminders, and ways to come back to yourself when everything feels like a little too much. You can download it for free on the Hellbloom Haven website.
If you’d like to keep receiving my writing and follow along as Hellbloom Haven grows, subscribe below. There’s plenty more to come.
Thank you for walking a little piece of this road with me.
