I started blogging in 2009. Seems like a long time ago now. Riley was one. I blogged through her ICU stay and through about a year of trying to get pregnant again and all about little people becoming themselves. I blogged through depression. Deep, dark, never say it out loud depression but I could still write about how awful it was. Most people stopped reading then. 95% stopped reading then. Babies are so nice to read about, depression is ugly and boring and sad. But I kept writing. And then I didn’t. You could blame time and I certainly have in the past, but the truth is you always have time. I had two hours last night where I sat on the armchair watching Outlander and crocheting scarves. If I’d wanted to, I could have.
For awhile now, Kate and I have had an idea of having a personal blogging section in this space and I was excited by that but somehow there was always some kind of block stopping me from writing anything.
I think when you have a personal blog, there’s a sense of trust there that if you expose parts of yourself to people that it is safe to do so. And this seems more unknown, more risky, less safe. Years ago I was on a blogging panel and I was asked if I ever regretted anything I’ve hit publish on. I said no, without hesitation. And that if you have that moment were you pause over something, often it means that it’s really important. Or it could be really important to someone if you could just find the words for something that has been clattering around their heart without voice or meaning. If you could just say that out loud, it might stop clattering in all manner of other places. I think that’s what blogging is. Giving people the gift of words so they can be alone without being lonely.
Sometimes when I’m out running I still blog in my head. But I haven’t written it down in a long while. For awhile for me to hear the words has been enough. When you publish things you have to accept that once you hit publish the words don’t belong to you anymore, and I needed them to for a time and now I think I’m ready to let them go again.
A friend and someone I coach said to me the other week ‘sometimes it’s hard to be the anchor’. And I’ve thought on that for probably longer than she ever intended me to. It is true. Sometimes you have a great asset in my case I’d say that two of my best qualities are persistence and consistency – and after awhile you are so predictable in that – well what you do becomes unremarkable – even if you have to move heaven and earth to keep it going. A bit like how you don’t see the duck’s feet when it’s swimming – you just see it gliding across the water.
So I guess I’m going to take some of my own advice. Write my own story. Be my own greatest supporter. And let my words go.