There are moments in my life where I sometimes have such a stirring on the inside of me but I'm not even sure what it's for. That's how I felt before I attended Blissdom last week. In many respects I wasn't even sure why I was going. Blogging for me has always been my therapy. I do it because I like to do it, not because I have ambitions to write books, to make lots of money or to boost a photography business that everyone but me wants me to have. When I sat down in the first session, I questioned what I was going to even learn... if anything I mentioned in my previous Blissdom post that it wasn't so much that I learned new things so much as I was inspired. I probably don't let on to it much, but in many ways I have questioned my truthfulness in my blogging. Not that I am NOT truthful, it's just that sometimes the negative comments to being truthful can make me question why I am so open and vulnerable to begin with (ie: if people are going to give me a hard time about being so open, why am I even open at all). I've tried to shove these thoughts in the back of my mind as I have blogged (especially over the past two years, where there was much in my life going on behind the scenes that I was unable to blog about, but that still impacts me and how I live life), and even though I've tried to shove it all far away, it always came back to nag at me. That maybe I was being too negative. That people wouldn't like the bad parts of my life.
That nagging followed me to Blissdom. And I'm happy to say it left me the minute I heard Lisa Leonard speak. There's lots of talk in blog land about being positive. While I agree with all of it, I also feel that if we completely dismiss the hard parts of our stories, that we can forget the refining moments of our lives. For the past two years I've worried about including the conflict. Worried that if I mentioned that I've been an angry mom, that I have struggled to get used to having two kids, that I have had days that I feel like a complete and utter failure, that somewhere, someone would be upset about it and in the end I'd be a failure for listing my failures. I'm sick of listening to those voices. In real life, away from the blog, I'll tell you if I'm having a crappy day. So my blogging will reflect that. It will reflect me. A me that thinks that even though life is awesome, there's still crappy moments, and yet through it all GOD IS STILL GOOD.
I hope that's what you get when you read my blog. If you don't, then I'm missing what I feel my purpose is in writing. I want to be that mom that comes along side another mom and says "it's OK if you're not OK. This (motherhood) is HARD. But it gets better. Take hope... you'll make it, and you'll be able to look back at even the hard moments and smile." The moms that have stopped me in the store and said that to me-- they're the ones I want to hug. Not the ones who talk about how rosy life is and how they'd love to change a million and one more poopy diapers. The real mom is the mom I want to walk alongside.The real mom is who I want to be.
SO...in the end I'll continue to share the bad and the ugly along with the good, because quite honestly, I don't want to forget the hard parts of my journey. The hard parts are what make me ME. They are my refining moments. Just like a beautiful piece of pottery is much more interesting if you see the entire journey, so it will be with me. I want you to not only see the shiny, pretty result of the trials (and errors) of my life, but the entire process. I want you to see the mud and the muck so that when it's all washed off, we can enjoy the end together. Blogging is about community. And if conflict builds community, then that is what I want to share.
