The Blogosphere May Be Dead, But Blogging Is Worth It--Dang it!

I started blogging in 2007 when our family moved to Israel for a short period while my husband conducted some collaborative Physics research with an Israel scientist. We lived in Rehovot, Israel at the Weissman Institute. I needed a way to share our adventures with people while recording them long-term for myself.

 I kept blogging when we returned to Sweden and recorded the events of our last year living in Lund, Sweden. I blogged through our move back to the United States, recounting the mundane, tragic, and triumphant events of four years in New York. I closed the door on that blog when we moved to Saudi Arabia. It was a new chapter and I wanted a new home for our desert adventures.

For eighteen months I recorded the highs and lows of life in the Middle East. Many other women recorded their experiences much more eloquently and more insightfully, but my blog was personal and real. When we returned to New York, I felt like I had adequately recorded and preserved our lives in Riyadh.

Back in New York over the past four years, I write on my new blog sporadically. At one point, I blogged daily and then fell off the wagon as events spiraled out of control in my life with my children. I couldn't physically write because it was just so hard.

Today I went back to my original blog to pull some blog posts about a Happiness project I conducted. You guys, I loved reading my old posts. I am so glad that I recorded so much. I am glad I wrote essays about things I pondered. I shared personal things and challenges we experienced. I don't regret one blog post.

I am going to keep blogging, not perfectly or daily, but as much as the mood strikes me. Writing is good for me and I love the record that is made when I write. 

Telling Your Story Prompts

I belong to this amazing Facebook scrapbook group called "The Scrap Gals" run by Tracie Claiborne and Tiffany Lowder. Tracie and Tiffany host a weekly podcast called "The Scrap Gals" where they discuss all things scrapbooking. They have a fun, easy rapport and laugh a lot as they talk about the importance of memory keeping. The conversations continue in their Facebook group as we talk about their podcasts and discuss challenges and triumphs of scrapbooking.

I have noticed that a lot of women struggle with scrapping their own stories. They wonder what they could scrap about if they don't have kids or if their kids are grown up. Sometimes their lives are relatively simple and they wonder if they have enough to scrap about it if they don't travel a lot. I have actually noticed this phenomenon for many years among the scrapbook community. It is easy to understand. A lot of women start scrapping when they marry or when they start having children. It kind of has the hallmarks of a mom hobby. Which is fine. I scrap a lot of stories about my kids and with six kids, I have a lot of fodder.

But I think the reluctance to scrap about oneself also stems from centuries and centuries of women's stories being repressed and ignored. Many women authors in the past had to publish under pseudonyms or anonymously to be taken seriously. Women's stories and contributions to history were all but ignored--unless they behaved "badly" or outside of the cultural norm. Even within religious texts like the Bible, women's stories are hidden. Even today, we have many instances where the experiences and stories of women are not believed-especially when it comes to sexual harassment and assault. Is it any wonder that women are reluctant to share their stories?

The other aspect of not telling one's story is the perception that one's personal story isn't important or valuable enough to tell. How many women have you met that have said, "I'm just a mom. I'm not very special. I don't lead a very exciting life. I just work at a normal job. Or I just feed and clothe my family."  And the excuses go on and on.

I believe, so passionately, that every woman has an important story to tell about herself. Each woman has a unique set of circumstances and experiences that have shaped her into a distinct and important individual. I also believe in the importance and power of storytelling. I believe that storytelling affects generations and when we choose not tell our stories, we are depriving our family and friends of the wisdom and importance of our personal stories.

Back to The Scrap Gals facebook group. For the past couple of weeks, I have been posting a story prompt each day. I try to make these story prompts neutral so that everyone can share a story whether or not they are married or have children. It's my hope that they will motivate my fellow scrapbookers to see their lives as scrap worthy.

So far I have asked the following questions:

What are you good at?
What is the best vacation you have ever taken?
What traditions do you have for the fall season? Do those traditions vary from when you were a child?
Are you a pet person? Do you have a pet or a pet story?
Do you enjoy reading? If so what are some favorite authors or books you enjoy?
What is a special friend you have never scrapped about? What makes/made your relationship important and special? Are you still friends? Why or why not?
How did you get the job you have now?
What is something you wish you knew about a loved one who has passed? And how would you turn that question around to yourself?
Tell me about a time when you lost something like a competition, a race, or some object important to you?
What is your Sunday routine?
Have you moved a lot, a little, or never?
Exercise and sports: how do you feel about those things? Like, love, or hate them? Did you do sports in school?
What was your favorite toy from childhood?
What was a favorite food you enjoyed as a child? What is the story behind it?
What are you bad at?
What is a lesson you learned from going through a challenge?

I have so enjoyed the comments and discussions our group has had. The stories have sparked so many memories and ideas for me. I plan to start making 6x8 Project Life app pages to answer these questions for myself. At the end, I should have an amazing book about my own life.

10 Tryon Circle

For two days we walked through a variety of homes for rent in upper Westchester County. Brent and I were eager to start our new life after living in Sweden for 5 1/2 years while he studied for a Ph.D. in Physics. With a new job at IBM, we felt like we were on our way. The first time we walked into the house at 10 Tryon Circle, we both fell in love. It was twice the size of our 700 square foot apartment in Sweden and was in a charming neighborhood. Even though the rent was high, we felt like it would be a good fit for our family. So we signed a lease and in a month moved our family of six (my kids were ages 8, 6, 4, and 1) into the house.

That first year in New York was unbelievably difficult. Trying to adapt to life in a new culture (even though it was my home country) was much harder than I anticipated. The cost of living with its impending necessity of serious penny-pinching, setting up doctors, helping my children adapt to a new country consumed all my time. I neglected my health and found myself in a serious health crisis with my thyroid.

On the heels of my thyroid crisis, which we stabilized, I became pregnant and spiraled down into another health crisis that was baffling to myself and the doctors. Unfortunately, we did not know I was pregnant because I continued to bleed at regular intervals during the first trimester. During this time, I discovered a lump the size of a golf ball in my neck. Alarmed, doctors ordered a battery of tests and my days were filled with doctor visits, blood tests, x-rays, and many questions. After a couple months we determined that I did not have cancer and we finally learned that I was pregnant.

During this time, I was incapable of functioning normally. I was so fatigued that I could not manage the normal demands of a growing family. I cooked only minimally and all too often dishes languished in the sink. My kids wrote on walls, threw their toys around, and the house was quite messy. I was also trying to potty train my daughter which added another messy layer to the situation.

In the midst of this, our landlord decided to place the home for sale. I cautioned him and his wife that I was really ill and pregnant and while I wanted to keep the house show-ready, I wasn't capable of keeping it in that condition. They said they understood, and I tried my best but wasn't able to manage it.

One afternoon we got home from church and my landlord left a very angry message on our voicemail. We returned his call where he screamed at my husband for 30 minutes. My husband finally hung up. He went into problem-solving mode and worked out a solution to the situation. He hand-delivered a letter with his proposal to our landlord's home, leaving it in the mailbox. Our landlord responded by calling us and threatening to call the cops on us if we ever entered his property again. This was such a bizarre situation. After his threat, his lawyer sent us an extremely threatening letter promising to sue us and claiming all sorts of damages that did not actually exist.

It was horrible. We felt scared all the time that he would show up and get violent. We contacted a lawyer to see what protection we could get. In the middle of this, I was recovering from my health issues, I was pregnant and hemorrhaging, and we had four young children.

In this situation, we did the only thing we could, we broke the lease and stopped paying rent. We found a new home and then paid a settlement of a few thousand dollars to the landlord. Before leaving the home, we cleaned it until it sparkled. He sold the house just a couple months later.

It was so scary and overwhelming. The landlord had no compassion or empathy for our situation or my health. If he had been smarter, we would have probably tried to buy that home because we were eager to settle into our own home. With ten years of experience, I still think the landlord was out of control and shouldn't have responded as he did.

I wouldn't choose to experience that again, but that moment was a catalyst for change. My children attended a better school in NY  where the teachers were more understanding with my kids.  It pushed us to accept an offer to move to Saudi Arabia a few years later. We also grew and matured from that experience, choosing rentals carefully and looking for landlords with considerable experience.

I still feel sadness and a tinge of fear, even 10 years later, when I reflect back on that experience. We don't ever drive by to see that house because those last months were colored with so much trauma and difficulty.