First of all, thank you all so much for your concern. When I logged into my email and FB page, I was touched by all the messages and emails of concern about my well-being. I deeply apologize for giving any of you cause for worry; there have been no personal or family tragedies.
So, where have I been?
To be honest, I completely burned out. I’ve been running this blog for 7 years now, and I kind of thought I would run it forever. But a series of events led me to a breaking point where I just had to walk away.
Despite having an AMAZING team, the amount of work I needed to do every day to run this site became more than I could physically keep up with. I’m a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, and my family is my number one priority. My husband is working full-time and going to school part-time, which means he is gone for most of the day. My kids are now in 4th and 6th grades, so the amount of homeschool work has increased quite a bit as well.
Trying to keep our home running smoothly with my husband gone most of the time, keeping up with my kids schooling, and trying to run a website full-time (even part-time!) was enough to keep me so stressed out that I lost a very unhealthy amount of weight over the past year. I felt so drained ALL the time and it was beginning to really affect my health.
I was also being led to teach a weekly class in our homeschool community. I knew I needed and wanted to do this, but adding that one little thing was like the straw that broke the camels back. It would be impossible to do it all. And I am someone who hates admitting that I can’t do it all. But I can’t. I had to be realistic for the sake of my family and my health.
So, in a moment of stress-induced panic, I quit. Even though I knew it had to be done, it was so incredibly hard. I love this website and the wonderful community of readers here. And I’m so sorry this note is long overdue, it was difficult to find the words to explain this decision.
All of that said, Couponing 101 is not going away completely. I’m not removing the website; all of my tutorials, recipes, and couponing tips are still here and will remain here (I even plan on reorganizing the site a bit so that these older posts are easier to find). I just won’t be sharing constant updates on deals and coupons like I did before. I still plan to post occasionally, when there is an exceptional deal, or a tip or idea I need to get off my chest (kind of like how I did things in the very beginning, when I first started blogging). I know it won’t be the same, and most of you won’t stick around, but this is the only way I can keep the blog going and still keep my sanity.
Thank you all SO MUCH for reading. I am so incredibly thankful for all of you who have been with me for years; I appreciate you more than I can even express. ♡