It feels like ages ago that I started this little blog. Hard to believe its only been months. Time plays funny tricks on me these days, reminding me that it really is all relative.
When I started this blog, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. It was a place for me to write, to experiment, to be newsy and practice being brave. I expected that I would write stories about our life here in Maryland and that maybe through those stories I would reveal something about the journey that Max and I are on, a journey of loss and recovery, of independence and reinvention and grief and grace and that maybe someone would like them. I expected that some of these stories would be deeply personal and that I would need to make decisions about what to share to protect my own heart.
But an interesting thing is happening here in our world. When I started writing Max and I were on the tail end of what had been on a long dark hike through the loss of Juan. It was a lonely journey. Writing was a way to help me connect with my thoughts, beliefs and experiences as we walked into the sunrise of our new life. We are still on the journey of course, but it has changed. While it is true I am still struggling with issues around single parenthood, helping Max cope with not having a full-time dad, and the never ending juggling act of trying to do it all, these relatively lonely struggles are no longer at the center.
Day by day, my band of fellow travelers is growing. I have realized that my struggles are not any different really that so many others. I am lucky to have connected with some really interesting and cool people who are themselves reaching out, struggling, journeying–living really, just living, life to its fullest. Some are the people who have been walking with me silently through the long dark icky time when my marriage was going going gone. Others are new to us. Some have become a regular part of our everyday life while others are just passing through for a short time. But I am struck by how much in the last few months I feel connected to community, to a great body of others all trying to make it, not always succeeding, but willing to stand up and try (just try) to be brave in big and small ways. Each one of them is a teacher, a guru, and a partner (whether they intend to be or not).
I am awed by how much of what I am learning is coming from this interaction with my community. And so therefor I find it difficult to talk about my life without simultaneouosly talking about the lives of others. And so I find myself here struggling wanting so desperately to whisper stories to you that illustrate or punctuate what we are going through here in Maryland and yet desperate to protect the privacy of my loved ones who are my partners on this path. And as I sit to write I find myself dancing around the point a bit.
Some of the boundaries are clear–I would never share anyone’s personal story without getting their permission. I wouldn’t share something I had written just for them without asking their OK. But then once we move past black and white it starts to get murky… Do I need to get permission to mention their first name in passing? To post a photo? To share something beautiful or lovely they did or said? And how do I go about doing that in a way that doesn’t seem self important? Suddenly the public-ness of posting on a blog becomes real to me–very real and apparent and scary and stark. I am embarrased and ashamed to ask them if I can share what I am learning from our friendship together here in this very public forum. Not because I don’t think they will be giving or because I fear their judgement for asking but because the very act of asking permission means I need to claim the space of being “a writer”–something that seems scary to me. And it means admitting that I have a blog or that I think the blog is important or that someone might just be reading it. It means owning the fact that I am putting my writing out into the world–that I think it is good enough to put out into the world. And then I ask myself–Do I really? And this is a heavy thing indeed. I have put my writing out there not really sure if anyone is even reading it but now…now I need to assume they are. And this freaks me out as much as it thrills me.
And as I write here I am struck just how scared I am to claim this title so that I can keep going here, how I can keep going with the stories no longer of me–but of us.
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