Where We’ve Been

Hello there, friends and readers. We here at 101 Achievements would like to apologize for our absence at the blog. Six weeks ago, after a short but aggressive battle with liver disease, we lost our little red dog, Lucy. Readers of the blog have definitely gotten to know Lucy over the years, and for the six and a half years that she was in our lives, we were the luckiest two people on earth. She was our little ray of sunshine, and our hearts have broken with losing her.

For awhile, we debated if we even wanted to continue writing the blog. Grief is a funny thing; it seeps over into every part of your life. Even though Lucy, being a not-so-well-behaved adorable little dog, couldn’t come along with us to restaurants or cross-country journeys anyway, we had this feeling of ‘why bother writing any of it anymore?’ when she passed. Even the things that she couldn’t be a part of for this blog, we felt uneasy going about without her.

‘Time will help you heal’ is the most common phrase we have heard in these past six weeks. And I’m sure it will someday be true. But right now, it seems like these days, six weeks later, are harder than the first days leading up to and immediately after the day she passed.

So, we have talked a lot about whether or not to continue the blog. And the decision we have come to, after all of these discussions, is that the best way to honor Lucy and the life we had built with her is to keep going. Lucy hated that we went out to restaurants and events without her, but she loved sitting like a proper little angel to beg for the treats we brought home for her. She loved lounging on her blanket or perching on her chair in our office while we wrote blog posts. And she certainly loved when she could be a part of the Achievements as well.

We have been trying to stay busy — going out dancing, hanging out with friends, heading out on our bikes for long weekend rides. We have been completing Achievements. We have been documenting. But we have struggled with how to address the loss of our Lucy, and decided to start here. We do have one more Lucy-themed Achievement coming up in the next month, as well. But we have decided it is time to come back to the blog. It is time to write again, to take more steps toward healing.

Check back tomorrow for a new post. And thank you for giving us the time and space we needed to be ready to return to the keyboard.