Where have you been? (Life Update)

Video Transcript

Hi! This is Emma from mmmEnglish and it has been a few months since I last uploaded a video or a lesson here, several months. And I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about why.

I’ve had so many messages asking where I am, how I am, what’s happened.  For all of you who reached out to ask, I’m really grateful for your care and your concern. So I wanted to make this video today to talk about that, how I’ve been, what’s been happening and what’s happening next here at mmmEnglish.

Where to start?

I became quite unwell at the end of last year, I had a virus that infected my eyes and then as it developed it spread to a skin condition that covered my entire body and it took several months of treatment to clear. So I was really quite shocked, it came quite out of the blue. I was scared, I was worried for a little while, didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to fix it.

It was all triggered by stress and overwork. It really forced me to take a big step back and prioritise my health and then try to prioritise my work and the things that I do and how frequently I do them and how I show up and where I show up and what energy I take to all of those places.

At the time, I had so much on my plate. I was really forcing myself to continually be showing up and endlessly creating new content and you can even hear by the words that I’m using there, I was forcing myself to show up and endless content, continuously producing, it really felt like, at the time, I was showing up because I had to, because I was forcing myself to, not because I wanted to.

And then on the other hand, I had this incredible business that I was building. I’ve talked about Hey Lady! before. And in Hey Lady! I have an incredible team of coaches, of community managers, of developers and they all need me to show up.

I had spread myself too thinly across all of my responsibilities that I just felt like I wasn’t doing any of them well. I don’t know if you have ever experienced something similar, maybe to do with work, maybe to do with other things in life.

So often we get stuck in a place where we just can’t give our all. We can’t give everything. And I was showing up in all of these different places for all of these different people out of obligation to do it, not because I wanted to be there myself or I really felt like I was contributing in a valuable way but out of obligation for everyone else who needed me.

So something had to give and at the time I didn’t have the courage to say no to something, to one of those things and because I didn’t have the courage to say “no” I just, I disappeared and this tends to be how I manage difficult situations when things get hard. I slip away and I try and solve problems myself on my own.

If you’re like me and you do that too, I don’t think that it’s a bad thing. I think it’s just something that you need to acknowledge, you need time to do.

Hello Frankie. Life is hard, isn’t it?

She’s right next to me on the couch.

But I’m so glad that I did it. I really wanted to come back ready to give you everything. I want to create every lesson that I make for you willingly and freely and with so much love because I know that that is such an important part about learning. You need the people who you are learning from to be inspiring you and to be motivating you and exciting you about what you’re doing and where you’re going and all of the opportunity that’s ahead of you.

So here I am!

I’m back. I’m here and I am so excited about all of the new lessons that I’ve got lined up ready for you. They’re going to start coming out over the next few weeks but I’m also going to be bringing back, I’m going to be reviving some older mmmEnglish lessons, lessons that you probably haven’t seen, they’re like circa 2018, you know, we’re going back a bit. I’ve been making videos here on YouTube for like seven years or something now so there’s a fair few that you probably haven’t even seen so get ready for Throwback Thursdays where we will be going back into the archives, reviving some older mmmEnglish lessons and it will give you a chance to review some of those important grammar points or those important vocabulary sets or pronunciation practice and we’ll be doing it all together.

Every like, every thumbs up, every comment, every share on a mmmEnglish video is going to help bring mmmEnglish back to life.

And if you are still here watching now, thank you for being here all the way through, I know that that means that you love mmmEnglish, that you care about me and about new lessons that I’m gonna put out here and I’m so grateful that I have your support.

In fact, just for you I’m going to put a transcript of this video down in the description with some of the key vocabulary and the expressions that I’ve used, highlighted and some examples around how to use it in different contexts because I don’t often just sit here and waffle on like this and speak off the cuff and it’s a really nice opportunity for you to learn some of the words and expressions that I use quite casually during conversations.

So I want to share that with you. You can get the link down in the comments and while you’re down there, leave me a little comment if you are excited about new mmmEnglish lessons. If you have any special requests or anything that you want to see from me, let me know down in the comments. I would love to reconnect with you and to spark some new energy here at mmmEnglish.

Thank you so much for being here with me all the way through and over the years.

So much love and respect to you!