mommy blogging

over seventeen years ago, i started a blog. not this one. it was the first of a handful i have had over the years. one of my friends had showed me another woman's blog about her pregnancy + i was sold. i had always loved writing. i was the girl in english class that looked forward to doing her journal entries in her notebook for class. i wrote short stories for fun. i just loved putting my thoughts on paper. so ... my girlfriend helped me set up my first blog. fast forward to 2014 and that same woman whose blog i read all those years ago ... well, we were now in business together. not only that, but when we met on one of our work retreats (young living silver retreat in idaho), we became real life friends. it was wild. like, i had just met her but literally had been following her life for eight years. it was like we had been friends forever! the woman whose blog i first read is nicole barczak. she's to the right of me in the picture below. the image was taken during that retreat in idaho while we were white water rafting. years later, we are still friends and still work together! i'm so grateful for her.

this was the same story i had with a lot of online friends from the mommy blogging community. we had 'met' online through our words and pictures. i remember when having friends on the internet was weird. now, people don't even think twice about it. anyways, back to mommy blogging. there were two reasons the insane popularity of it died a bit. one was the death of google reader. with google reader, you could add all of the addresses of the blogs you followed and they would show up in the same feed in the reader. you didn't have to jump around from blog to blog. this made it almost TOO easy to follow literally anyone and everyone that had a blog. the other reason was the rise of social media. when facebook started letting all the moms on ... their words and stories moved with them. from that point on, blogging kind of changed forever. but here's the thing. i still love writing. there are so many reasons i do it. it's like therapy to get it all out of your head sometimes. it's also connecting with others that relate to me. the online community has been such a huge blessing in my life. oh, and a weird bonus that seems morbid, but is true ... is that long after i'm gone, my words will still be here. my kids will still be able to read them and hear my voice. i'll be honest. i have to train myself to show up regularly like i did back in the early days. but this space is so special to me that it is worth the effort. i'd love to hear from you in the comments if you're following me here! let's make blogging great again. haha!