I often say “I could write a book about all the {insert randomly connected experiences here} over the years.” The funny thing is, in a way, I have written a book on this blog. It has taken many years to document a life which is pretty darn good, considering the ups and downs. A full life, with experiences and stories of all kinds, some I do not recall well and some I have not mentioned on here, because they are too private and kept close to my heart.
I could spend hours clicking back through my words here, looking at the scads of photos I have taken of my family of five, now turned into seven, and formed in a different way than it was when I started the blog, exactly twelve years ago. Of course, I had no idea what life would bring back then. I was the mother of 1.5 children (pregnant with Gavin) and was about to embark on a career change, and become a stay-at-home mom. I was green. Completely green. Yes, I was experienced in diaper changing, spit-up clean up and picking up a kid on time from daycare, but I really had no idea what full time motherhood was like. I was navigating a marriage, with already tiny scars and giving it everything I had, trying to understand how forgiveness really works. I was also on a constant unknown-to-me-yet mission of trying to make everyone happy. It would take years for me to realize it’s just not possible.
And I didn’t put a lot of those things here.
I posted the happy, the photos of us as a family and trips to see my out-of-town family, holidays, pre-school photos and outings with playgroups with the boys. First days of school and travel to the beach, visits with Santa Claus and pictures of my home. I baked and cooked and make connections with many other “mommy bloggers”, through comments and link-ups and conversations on Twitter (this was before Facebook took over the world).
I showed the good, sometimes the hectic, but the bad got kicked to the curb, as they used to say.
I don’t regret it.
And what I find now, if I really look back through my archives is true growth. Growth in my photography, growth in my writing and growth in myself.
I am not the same person I was twelve years ago. I mean yes, deep down I am. However, that person was somewhat lost and didn’t always tell the truth. I was living what I thought was my best life and in some ways it was. But it was marred by little lies I told myself and therefore others too. Obviously, my whole life is not a lie. I do not mean it that severely. I simply mean to say, I was giving what I had at the time my best shot, and it was good, until it wasn’t (at least the marriage part anyway).
Now, this many years later I have watched my children grow from babies (two born since I started writing here) and become their own selves. I have lived through a big move (that I now believe was life-changing) while pregnant, made many, many friends I would not even know if not for this space on the internet, gone through a divorce and fallen in love again.
It’s kind of amazing to think back over these years and see the changes, in my kids, my family and myself.
And what I can always fall back on are my words. They have been heard on the stage of Listen to Your Mother, been read in print in three anthologies, and on screen on many other sites. I have written them out of the experiences of love and anger and happiness and sadness. I have given them a life of their own, while making some sense of mine.
In many ways this space has saved me over the years and I am so thankful that I sat down that Sunday, after Thanksgiving 2006 to create a space where my words could rest. No matter what, I will always have this “book” to read and remember my life in words. It is a wonderful chronicle of these days, passing by at record speed, leaving only these letters to mark them. Good thing I have arranged them pretty well.
