Win, Lose, or Blog: What Blogging Taught Me About Myself

When starting this blogging journey over a year ago I had very specific ideas about what image I would portray to the world. I wanted to be real, honest, and upfront about the realities of life as a woman, motherhood journeys, and give other women a platform to share their stories. So many over the years have provided me so much insight into various lifestyles and situations that I wanted to share those women and all their greatness with the world. Well, when I started sharing I realized that being brutally honest would be a lot harder than I realized because it meant being vulnerable, an emotion I wasn’t as comfortable with as I had led myself to believe. In sharing my story and those of others a flood of memories and emotions that I had convinced myself were old news began to sprout up and I found myself in a familiar place of depression that was growing darker every day. While I love children and all things motherhood, sharing stories of births, fertility treatment, and happy families served as a daily reminder of what I had lost and what was so close yet out of my grasp. I found myself replaying those doctors’ visits, choosing a donor, the excitement of testing and prep, and that faithful day on my bathroom floor where I lost my dream of being a mother. That day when I hung my head in shame because I had failed at the one thing I felt I had been preparing for my whole life. Recalling every doctor visit since then when I would meet a new provider or give my medical history to someone and I have to say that I have suffered a miscarriage and they have that awkward silence and nod. I sit and wonder what they are thinking, and I go to my car after and want to drown my sorrow in alcohol (a former vice of mine among others).  The fact that I had finally begun shaping my dream of writing and working for myself and yet I was so miserable and down was awful. It was ironic that someone who has always been told they have a gift with words couldn’t find the right ones to express the pain I was experiencing. It all came to head over the holidays which are rough for me as they mean the time of year when I lost my baby, lost my marriage ( I was physically abused for the first and last time 7 months after miscarrying and asked for divorce) , and lost the man who raised me to cancer ( we hadn’t spoken in years due to an argument).  It was then I began therapy because I was in so dark a place dealing with this all, plus not writing for months due to the depression, and my illness advancing that I knew I couldn’t get out of the hole alone.

To think that all of this began in pursuit of my dream in my mind meant that my dream could never be my reality because I was too weak. This perceived weakness led to more distance from my dream and here I am. Today as I sit with my laptop on my bed with Criminal Minds playing in  the background I still find myself hesitant about sharing because I worry I may still find myself too weak to keep pushing forward. I have pages and pages of ideas that even when too afraid to write I kept track of in hopes that I would one day find my strength. Maybe today is the day. Maybe today is just one of many ups followed by a down, but either way I am putting finger to keyboard because I know that I wouldn’t have been given this passion without a purpose and if nothing else I owe it to everyone who believes in me and myself to keep trying. I am determined to learn this craft, to reach as many as I can, to share my story even on the bad days, and to show the world that even with the bruises come a beauty that this world deserves to see.