Hi my lovely friends and readers.

It has been a while. Too long. As is my style, I'm going to overshare now :)

I want to start by apologizing for how belated this update is. I committed to at least updating you all by the end of September (I think), and I failed to follow through. In a world where promises and platitudes are thrown around and abandoned with little regard, I am sorry to have contributed to the pattern of people breaking their word.

At long last, as you can see, I have mustered up the courage to face my shortcomings long enough to update you all. Apart from the mounting shame of feeling like I was letting everyone down by not publishing more chapters when I had intended, I was held off from providing an update because I stubbornly wanted to have something concrete to share with regards to the future of Broken Path. By that I mean I wanted to have a date that I was confident I could say I'd be ready to start posting chapters again.

Sadly, I do not, but a number of wonderful and supportive members of the story's readership have reached out to check in on me and the story these past months and it finally inspired me to say something.

For anybody who has been worried or wondering, I am okay and safe. It has been a really hard time, but I'm working through it.

Unequivocally, though I do not know when I'll be ready to start publishing chapters again, I want to assure you that I have no intention of abandoning the story.

It is very important to me. Perhaps too important. And perhaps that is why it became so overwhelming in the wake of what came up for me in life at the end of the summer. If anything, I cared too much and my compromised mental health, which had entered into an extended complex trauma response, turned that care into yet another excuse to torture myself with crippling anxiety, self loathing, and paralyzing perfectionism.

To be honest, as a byproduct of my complex trauma history (C-PTSD), I became obsessed with trying to make my story PERFECT for everyone. Doing so, made me lose my voice as an author, unable to distinguish between my own thoughts and intentions for the story and the critical voices of others. The fact that anyone could find anything to criticize became evidence that not only am I lacking as a writer, but as a person. The trauma brain is illogical like that. That goal of perfection by universal standards is impossible. I know it. And the hubris to assume that I could somehow appease every dissenting voice is pure insanity. This is a truth that every writer, every artist, and in some senses, every person must confront. It is something I have confronted before, and in the past, when I could not overcome it, I have often been unable to choose any path other than abandoning projects and passions because anything less than perfection felt unbearable, like a shining advertisement for my flaws and unworthiness of love and belonging, and not ultimately worth doing. But this time I was unwilling to admit defeat because of how much I care about this. Writing is one of the most important things in my life these days and Broken Path is a story I'm unwilling to let go of.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The way this whole thing manifested has exposed a lot of old wounds and given me an opportunity to do some deep (and deeply challenging) healing. I'm still working through things, still excavating abandoned pieces of myself that need healing, still repairing my relationship with myself and with writing. I'm still relearning how to enjoy writing again without turning it into terrifying torture that grinds to a halt every time I need to make a decision that will have lasting impacts. And thankfully I'm making progress. I don't know how much farther I have to go before I have a stable and healthy writing process again, nor how long it will take for that process to be resilient enough to handle the weight of other people's scrutiny and criticism that comes with posting and publishing. I wish I did. I wish I could say, "I'll start posting chapters again on January 10th, with X schedule and post X number of words a week consistently for the next 3 years maybe taking a month off each year." But I have no confidence in such a statement. And we all deserve better than yet another string of empty and misleading words that only set us up to be let down.

So, my friends, I just want you to know that there will be more story some day. That I do care. That I am doing my best to get to a place where I can get more chapters to you. And hopefully, when that time comes, I'll be able to post consistently and not leave you hanging again.

I'm sharing all of this extra detail and self disclosure not to make excuses or garner pity or to be rescued, but rather, to share openly about something that is usually kept quiet and hidden. This way, if any of you are struggling, feeling stuck or alone or hopeless or worthless, you can know that you aren't alone. Humans are biologically hardwired to be a social species, and regardless of whatever toxic bullshit is spouted by repressed stoic armchair philosophers and "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" self help gurus, we are not meant to suffer in silence and solitude. We were built with a capacity for empathy and connection that is truly profound. Just by standing in the same room, our nervous systems are capable of co-regulating, sharing feeling and emotion and even heart rate and blood pressure without words. To me, that is evidence of the true nature of humans. Yes, it is also in our nature to lash out and inflict harm and blindly hold onto false beliefs that blind us when we are hurt or afraid or carrying trauma. But that is only a conditional outcome, one of many manifestations of our natural survival responses when danger is perceived (and yes, feeling alone or outcast is naturally perceived as danger). Our capacity for empathy is there regardless of conditioning, though some of us actively repress it. The "sensitivity" that is often shamed and looked down on (at least it was by those around me when I was growing up), might just be the antidote to the horror and cruelty we see in the world today, for if we were as sensitive to one another as we are wired to be, it would be much harder to inflict harm, to abuse and to neglect.

Anyway, soapbox time is over. For those of you who celebrate (northern hemisphere) winter holidays, I hope you are staying warm and have a tribe or family to belong and connect with, and if not, I hope you are able to offer yourself the love and grace that you need.

-MaerBear