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Farewell Susan

February 6, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I have tears tonight for someone I never met. She just appeared, as new blog friends do, and I came to know her name and her face. I read her blog – not always, but occasionally, as is often the case when I come across someone I’m just getting to know whose words reach out from the computer screen and touch something in me.

If the blogosphere is made up of circles she and I danced in ours, occasionally crossing paths and sharing a word or a smile on the way by.

One day I was on Twitter and realized I wasn’t following her. I fixed that straight away, naturally, and not long after I got the notification that she had followed me too. We both laughed. “How could I not have been following you?” “I know! I thought that too!” Maybe we had just assumed. Maybe it was a Twitter goblin unfollowing people without my permission. Either way, we both fixed that link in our circles.

And so we danced.

I saw her around, we shared a few comments, I read her blog.

She seemed better, and then got sick, and the community rallied. I sent her a Lego figure, because No Princess Fights Alone.

She wasn’t well, and I watched her updates with fear and hope and little understanding of what it must be like to fight cancer for five years. To fight it and beat it and fight it again, on and on while your two small boys stand by.

There are no words except goodbye, because today our community lost one of our lights and tonight my world is darker because of it.

Susan – @whymommy – you were loved. And will be missed.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: community, spreading the love

Gratitude, Comment Love and Something Entirely Unrelated

January 3, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Confession: The revision history on my last post is RIDICULOUS. I edited it over and over and just could not get it right.

It actually started off as my blogging anniversary post, and it was directed at those of you who come here and read and offer support. I wanted to tell you how much that has meant to me over the last year. How much it means to me now.

Writing about something as personal as depression—especially in the moment, as so many of my posts were—feels incredibly vulnerable. I wrote about those things because I needed to have them live somewhere other than inside my own head, but there was also a part of me that wanted to hear I wasn’t alone. And wow, am I ever NOT ALONE.

Image credit: Joffley on Flickr

Over the last year I have come to realize just how many people struggle with depression and anxiety, and I hate that there are just SO many. But I love that there is so much support out there too, and that it’s becoming more and more okay to admit to these things.

So in the end, after realizing that it simply wasn’t working, I wrote something more simple for that anniversary post and said what I really wanted to say, which is: Thank you for loving me. But I didn’t give up on the rabbit.

I played around with that post some more and eventually decided it was actually about something different. And then it got to a point where I thought it was good enough, so I published it.

And then you all took over.

I’ve had so many incredible comments and messages and re-tweets on that post. It seems I struck a nerve. I keep trying to respond to those comments, and I will, but right now I don’t really know what to say. It’s all making me feel a bit weepy.

So again: Thank you.

On a related note, if you want another glimpse into why it’s so important for us to write about depression and have it be acceptable, go and read the latest post by The Bloggess. Jenny, if you don’t know her already, is absolutely, stunningly hilarious. But she also deals with mental illness. She writes about that pretty openly, but this post really blows the doors off. Go, read, and give her some love.

And now sometimes entirely unrelated…

I wasn’t actually planning to post today because I signed up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) for January, where the goal is to write a post a day for the whole month. And after I signed up I decided that was crazy, so I intended to cheat (sort of) and just direct you to my Just.Be.Enough. post today. But then you were all so nice and I kind of got sidetracked writing this.

Anyway… I did write a post for Just.Be.Enough. today and it’s about Spanx. See? Entirely unrelated.

I’m going to close comments on this one, so please either visit me at Just.Be.Enough. or go and give Jenny some comment love. (She’s already got over 1,000 comments, but what’s a movement if not something that really takes off?)

R xo

Filed Under: Better world, Happy things, Hard things, Randomness · Tagged With: anxiety, community, depression, going public, gratitude, love, spreading the love, we're not alone

One Year Later

January 1, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

It feels as though the post on my one-year anniversary of blogging ought to be profound. I started off trying to write something like that, but it’s not working and will be relegated to another post, another day.

New Year’s Day usually feels quiet to me. A calm before the bustle of January, when the it’s-the-holidays excuses for being lazy or skipping out early no longer work. That’s what January 1, 2011 felt like to me.

I have a vivid mental picture of that day, which I don’t have for most New Year’s Days (tending, as they do, to all blur together). I had spent New Year’s Eve 2010 in the usual fashion—with Chinese food followed by blissful nothingness—with one critical difference. That last night of 2010 I sat on the floor of our living room, in front of the fire, and set up a blog in WordPress.

It was totally unplanned. I had been thinking about writing about my experience with motherhood, but I hadn’t really thought about it being so specifically about PPD and I really hadn’t thought about getting into blogging. And yet there I was with wordpress.com on the screen in front of me and before I knew it this blog was born.

It was a short time later that I became Farewell Stranger, but at that time I was simply MamaRobinJ. I had a basic blog and a Twitter account (because I didn’t want to use my professional Twitter persona for this very personal project) and I decided I was going to do it. And then I went to bed.

The next day, during the quietness that was January 1, 2011, I got a direct message on my other Twitter account from my boss. “MamaRobinJ is a great idea,” he said. And my heart exploded in holy-shit-fuelled adrenaline.

That was the start of what became a slow progression towards having it be okay to talk about this. I would say a year later I’m 95% there – it’s still not something I bring up early on when I meet new people, and the people at my new job don’t know this about me yet (unless they’ve Googled me, in which case hi!). But it’s no longer an oh-God-please-don’t-find-my-blog sort of thing.

For I guess that’s the beauty of blogging, isn’t it? It can be whatever we want. If we want to be anonymous, we can. If we want to use it to say, “This is who I really am. This is my experience. Do you still love me?” we can.

One year later, this is who I really am. And not because I hid who I was, but because this blog, and those of you who have been with me during the last year, have allowed the protective shell I placed around myself to crack and let the light in.

One year later, this is who I really am. Because you still love me.

Image credit: ms.Tea on Flickr

So today, on this New Year’s Day that feels not quiet but alive with possibility, I wish to say thank you. Thank you for this last year. Thank you for loving me.

Have a cupcake.

Filed Under: Happy things, Love letters, Motherhood, Postpartum depression, Writing · Tagged With: blogging, community, firsts, gratitude, perspective, spreading the love, we're not alone

The Honesty-Dignity Equation

November 29, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

If you were around here in the summer you may remember that I put myself out there on video and managed to land an opportunity to speak at a Bloggy Boot Camp in Dallas in September 2012. Well today I’m not here – not because we’re moving in to our new house (woo hoo!) but because I’m over visiting my SITStas. (Is that a word? It is now.)

I’m guest posting on SITS today about how to blog honestly without losing your dignity. (What? I only posted about my underwear once.)

Everyone has a line. Even me. I know where my line is and what I’m not willing (or able) to post about, but I might be willing to post more personal stuff than a lot of people. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where your line is, I just think sometimes it’s a good idea to push it a little bit. And doing so is less scary than you might think.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last 11 months it’s that, no matter what the struggle, we’re never as alone as we think we are.

What do you think – are you ready to step into the light?

Come and read my guest post and let me know what you think.

***

If you’re here from SITS (hi & welcome!) and you’re looking for the juicy stuff, here’s where you’ll find some of it:

Read “Loud” if you’ve ever yelled at your baby.

Ditto if you’ve ever wanted to throw your baby out the window.

On being a “bad” mom.

A post about how I got onto anti-depressants.

My scariest moment.

Not a good day.

The first of a two-part post about rage (which was also linked from the post on SITS).

Or maybe it’s easier to get it all in one video of my TEDx talk.

And if you’re looking for tips on getting freelance writing gigs, come back later in the week. I’m going to post some freelance tips for newbies based on my recent experience.