I always had the intention of writing this blog never to hurt anyone, but to make sense of my feelings. It’s more or less a public journal of my inner most thoughts and I think the reason it’s caught on so well is because of my vulnerability with my readers and to be quite honest, it’s not superficial; it’s real.

But after numerous phone calls and conversations with loved ones that matter more than the integrity and the accuracy of this blog, I have decided to stop talking about my loved ones without the explicit consent of that individual. Granted, this is something I should have been doing the whole time, but for whatever reason, I didn’t.

I won’t name names of who asked me to stop blogging about them because their integrity and privacy is now more important than viewership, but I have gotten this complaint three times from three individuals. The last person stated, “Dani, if I wanted to write my book about my life, I would have.”

They’re right.

It’s simply not fair of me to write real stories using real names and have my social media connected with my blog. I haven’t necessarily painted these individuals in the best light through my blog, which has led to a plethora of issues within itself. That’s not to say that any of these individuals are bad people; it’s like if I read your own diary, I would find things about your closest family and friends that don’t necessarily paint them in the best light, but it’s accurate to how you feel or think at the time of writing that entry.

One person I already have a very… strained relationship with as it is and when they confronted me with boundaries set with me in order to move on with a relationship, I had to stop blogging about them. I wanted to respect the newness of this rebuilding of a relationship and the sanctity of that. They held a grudge about something I wrote near the beginning of my blog when I held a lot of resentment in my heart about a lot of things.

That individual has every right to feel the way they feel; well, everyone has the right to feel their own feelings and have autonomy of their own thoughts. But to publicly ridicule what their thoughts were and blog my own thoughts and feelings is toxic. My intentions aren’t malicious and neither were my actions. I thought I was doing a good deed by sharing how I felt on a different platform and sharing my adversities with the world, which a lot of folks can relate to in their own regard.

I must recognize that actions have consequences; people do read my words and they hurt. Never my intention, but intentions mean virtually nothing when your actions don’t follow suit. Because my blog is written like a personal diary; some real stuff happens and it’s hard to hide who is who, even if I had wanted to. But I really shouldn’t be writing about these things without consent of those I want to include in my life’s blog.

To whomever I hurt, publicly or privately, through my blogging habits, I am deeply sorry. Thank you for bringing this to my intention and although I will not name names, you know who you are and this will find you well, I am sure of it. I just want to remind everyone that I can’t be or do better, if I don’t know better.

What I mean by this is if you make boundaries with a person in order to protect yourself and your feelings from getting hurt with said person, said person needs to know you are doing so in order to have an open and functioning relationship with you. I have just noticed a pattern of those who have set boundaries with me (rightfully so) never told me about them setting boundaries or why to me; they just became missing in action. In their defense, I didn’t shout and look for them either, but if you are close to someone for a number of years and then go MIA all the sudden, that feeling, sucks ass.

I suppose it goes to show that everyone can always work on communication and that it is truly key to making the world go round. God knows I can be a pretty abrasive individual and not the easiest to talk to… but in order to maintain and keep relationships, communication is necessary. I am normally not receptive to constructive criticism, even though I am the queen of giving it. But I am working on myself everyday and working on being more receptive to what people tell me, especially loved ones, is on the to do list.

Hence, why I am making a whole post dedicated to ensuring that my loved ones are now protected and being taken care of. It’s not much and I got a lot of relationship repairs I must do, but it’s worth the good fight. Onwards and upwards!

Dani