Today we’d like to introduce you to Erika Hunter.
Erika, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m the founder and blogger of Rediscovering Joi. It’s kind of a funny story, but I titled it ‘rediscovering joi’ because my middle name is Joi and I found that I had to rediscover myself at an early age. I decided to start this blog after I lost both of my parents to cancer. When my father passed away, I was 15 years old and didn’t know how to cope with his transition. I did everything, but heal. Six years later, my mother passed away and I knew then that I had to tend to my grief if I wanted to make sense of my new, harsh reality. By age 21, I was an orphan without any sense of direction and to be honest, I was terrified. I was still in college at the time and to my surprise, I managed to finish and thought that if I just kept busy, I’d forget about the pain of having to sustain myself as now an independent. Things appeared fine on the surface, but only I knew the demons I was battling internally.
I sought out therapy and though I went a few times, it was writing that I eventually turned to for my own therapeutic measures. In college, I was a journalism major so writing wasn’t exactly new to me. I always enjoyed writing, but this time, I used my writing as a source of healing. I wrote in a way that would help and inspire others to take action in their own unfavorable circumstances all while going through my own. Since grief is something that I believe connects us all, I started a blog that uncovers and unpacks my story from the very beginning of it to the present day.
The overall purpose of this blog is to establish a community of individuals who identify with grief and are on the quest to finding their joy (and themselves) again. This blog speaks to the importance of mental health and addresses issues like depression and anxiety alike. I know that this blog has room for growth, but I believe that it will eventually turn into something much greater than a blog and my words will reach audiences from all over the world.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Since I released the blog, it hasn’t been a smooth road. I find that it is sometimes difficult to write blog entries that talk about your story in great detail. Time and time again, I’m forced to relive some of the hardest moments of my life from watching my dad perish and my mom not knowing how to use the restroom on her own. I remember wrestling with my first blog entry entitled “The Mourned Creator” and thinking, maybe I won’t put this particular detail in it. Then, I had to sit with myself and question why I wanted to withhold information from my audience when I encourage transparency and vulnerability.
I soon realized that I was afraid of what someone might think of me and how I handled my grief. I decided to change the narrative and be as open as possible for the sake of my audience knowing that they aren’t alone in their situations. I have found that people resonate best with your story when you’re willing to shed light on the ugly, nasty truths of what you’ve gone through. If you’re only putting out the “best” parts of your story and hiding the rest, you aren’t really helping someone in their own healing. So, I speak of everything. Nothing is withheld. My truths are on the table and boy has it been life-changing! I’ve had people reach out to me directly and affirm that they, too, have experienced some of the same things I’ve shared.
Another struggle I faced when I first released this blog was believing that I could actually help people. I experienced, for the first time ever, imposter syndrome. I questioned my qualifications and whether I had the mental capacity to help someone in their journey while I continue to figure out my own. I overcame this struggle once I started to reflect on the number of women and men who are experiencing grief with no outlet to heal. This blog is designed to be a healing space for all because again, what connects is, is our grief. We have all lost someone or something and we all are looking for people to affirm that we aren’t alone in our journey of going through grief.
Lastly, I struggled with making my blog perfect. I wanted my site to be aesthetically pleasing and I desired for all of my blog entries to be conversational. I would spend hours editing my blog to make sure colors matched, everything was perfectly aligned and that my pictures were bright enough. I eventually reached a point where I decided to just go for it because my definition of perfect hinders me from doing what I desire to do.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
This blog serves the community of grieving individuals who are searching for healing. While it unpacks my own personal experiences with grief, it also challenges readers to think about how they identify with my truths and in what ways they can begin to heal from it. At the end of every entry, I pose a question for readers to consider as they journey through their rediscovery of self and joy. These questions are typically derived from the blog’s topic and they encourage readers to sit with the emotions that might come up from reading a particular entry.
More often than not, we tend to ignore the trauma we’ve experienced and what I wanted my readers to know more than anything is that grief cannot be ignored. I knew that when I released this blog, I wanted my readers to confront their hurt, pain and frustration with their reality of loss. It is the only way to truly heal and find resolutions that work best in moving forward. I think this motto sets us apart from other blogs. As the mourned creator of this blog, I inspire my readers to move forward in their grief as opposed to moving on. At Rediscovering Joi, we recognize that grief is an evolution of feelings and emotions that reside with us for as long as we live.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have released the blog sooner. I was so concerned with wanting everything to be perfect that I extended its release date. Back in April, I told myself that I’d release it on Mother’s Day in commemoration of my mom. Before I knew it, it was Father’s Day and my blog still hadn’t been published. Fast forward a few months and it still wasn’t up and running. I was consumed by wanting not only my site to be aesthetically pleasing, but my blog entries to flow in a sequence of my story. Once I stepped outside of my perfectionism, I decided to release it in late September. At that time, I still didn’t think all of my blogs were written perfectly or that my website was appealing enough so I published the site without sharing it.
More recently, it has been shared on my social media channels and I’m thrilled about the feedback I’ve received thus far! I had to realize that as I evolve, so will my blog and as my blog evolves, so will the traction to it. Nothing is perfect at the beginning and that is okay. Don’t get me wrong, it was still hard to copy and paste my blog’s link onto all of my networks, but I’m so happy I finally did! It made me feel extremely proud of how I’m using my story for the greater good in helping people with theirs. I’ve learned that waiting for something to be perfect will prolong your process and slow things down. You have to decide to ‘just do it’ and when I understood that, my life and impact changed for the better.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rediscoveringjoi.com
- Phone: 3109080150
- Email: [email protected]
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