Reviewing my Blog

Wow.  I have been away from this blog for so long.  But this blog has never been far away from me.  It always lurks in the back of my mind - I just don't know where to start.  There is a list on my phone of things to blog about.  Everything from updates about the growth of my girls to soul searching posts about the meaning of life.  There are titles ruminating like:

How to mourn with those that mourn - a guide for dummies
Losing your mom means never having to say I'm sorry
Mothering should be a half day activity

I want to write the thoughts that constantly course through my mind, the lessons I learn everyday, and just the mundane stories that will mean something to my family with the passing of years.

But I get stuck when I try to make things make sense.  [like that sentence for example]  It is hard to blog about life when life is so hard to nail down.  It's sloppy and unorganized and real.  It's a mish-mash of emotion.  It's difficult to organize my thoughts in my own mind, and harder still to prepare them for publication with matching photos and put them up here in an order that makes any sense at all.

I've thought about doing a Flashback Week - because we've had adventures that I'd like to share and memories I'm desperate to preserve.  Flashback Week represents my need to keep everything in some kind of order.  My obsession with perfection.  Isn't so much of blogging about that, in one way or another?  Searching for a way to present our lives to each other?  Trying to present it in a way that's neater than how we live it?  Ah yes, that is a post for another day.

I'm rambling now.  Let's get back today.  Today I sat down today to put up a post about Wren and how much she's growing.  And I looked through my old posts to figure out the last time there was a documentation of her age and development.  And in looking through the last few months, I realized how much this blog is a true reflection of my life.  Crazy things have happened!

I had a baby in December.
When that baby was 1 week old, my oldest daughter went into the hospital.
When that baby was 3 months old, my mother took her life.
These are all big big things.
And along the way there was normal life - and that baby just kept growing.
And now the baby is almost 7 months old.
We move to a new town next week.  Starting over in so many ways.
A birth, a death, a move - it's a lot to experience in the course of a year.

Looking over these old posts of mine and actually seeing a record of what we've been through has helped me stop obsessing about this blog.  It's a record.  It's not perfect, but it's authentic.  And that's what I've really been focusing on lately.  How to live the most authentic life I can.  And how to like the fact that it's not perfect in any way.

Kind of like these photos.  It was Memorial Day and I just really wanted that perfect, family-history-worthy photo of my daughters together.  But that's not what I got.

I didn't get a single photo where they were both smiling and someone's hand wasn't in the way.  In fact, I didn't get many photos where one of them doesn't look on the verge of death.  I was so frustrated at the time that I couldn't get my perfect photo.  But now I'm glad.  Because these pictures show so much more about who we are.  About what life is like right now.

And that is what I hope for this blog.  Maybe I will still do Flashback Week.  Hopefully I will one day find the time and the words to talk more about the lessons of grief and the lessons on life.  And I hope it can be forgiven if all is not presented here in a chronological order.  Because this blog is going to be an honest, authentic record of who I am and what I think.  And thank you, whoever you are, for reading it.