#22: Back to basics
Maybe I got too far away from what I was doing 10 years ago.
Hello again. I am trying to write this as my daughters climb all over me and pretend to be monsters. It’s incredible and also, very distracting. I also had to stop halfway through this to cut out unicorn heads from construction paper and make a banner for “Unicorn Day.” Oh to be a girl.
But to be honest, my girls aren’t to blame for my distraction. I have been very distracted in general lately, and this newsletter took the back burner. Again. I’m here to try to sort out some of that for anyone who reads this, but mostly for myself.
When I started this newsletter, I wasn’t totally sure what I wanted it to be. I started thinking about my old blogs, and I think I’ve gotten a little too far removed from some of the goodness that lived in those online spaces. Back in the 2010s, blogging felt like such a landscape of possibility, and because I was younger/didn’t have kids/etc., I felt a little more free to just write whatever I wanted. In a lot of ways, the lack of forethought was beneficial. I wrote some really heartfelt things and bravely hit Submit. But I never put much thought into the importance of that. It was just an exercise in sharing, which the internet has taught all of us to do, maybe especially us millennials. Back then, I wrote a lot about my stage of life—moving, getting married, being a 20-something trying to figure it all out—and about my family. I shared silly things, too, like gift guides and makeup empties, and I think a part of me was always hoping I would get noticed for those things. I never thought anyone would care about the personal stuff.
But without fail, the personal ones were the posts that got the most readership, the most traction. Why did I—and do I—minimize the part of me that people seemed to resonate with the most? Why wouldn’t I want to share the things that could connect us more?
I am wondering if that is what I need to get back to somehow.
I have my website with a blog on it, and the archives for that go back years. I think I tend to share more personal and/or rambling things to that space, because honestly, I doubt many people actually read it. It feels safer somehow to post those things somewhere that people might never see it.
It feels vulnerable to share anything I write. Every time I hit post, I feel this rush of anxiety. Writing is intimate and sacred, and it is often the result of something so deep in my heart that it almost feels wrong to share it at all. But the reason I write—and have always written—is to connect my story, experiences, and feelings with others. It has always, at its root, been about connection. When I share a poem about my daughters, it is to connect with other parents. When I write an essay about a death in my family, it is to connect with anyone who has lost someone they love. When I ramble on about the complicated feelings I have about my hometown or the state of the world, it is to connect with those of you who feel the same.
Writing for me has always been to say one thing: we are not alone.
The biggest part of my life that I want to share right now is motherhood. Everything I write, whether it is a poem or an essay or a freaking text message, it is nearly always about raising kids. I realize that this might mean a lot of people aren’t going to resonate with my writing; if you’re not a parent, it might not mean as much to you. That’s okay, though. Our work can’t be for everyone, right? And I hope that even if my content is very motherhood forward that everyone, regardless of parental status, can find something in it.
So I think I might try something new here. I want to share a few different things in different ways, depending on the content:
I will share writing prompts either directly from or inspired by the Write Yourself journal. These will be a mixture of free posts and some behind a small paywall.
I will share motherhood things—poems, musings, struggles—in a separate series of posts, in addition to my Instagram. I’m thinking of calling that series Matrescence. We’ll see.
Mostly, I will just keep trying to be myself and show up in a way that feels right to me. I can’t promise that won’t change again, but I can promise I’ll keep trying to share my writing in a way that helps us all feel less alone.
I hope you’ll keep reading.