Why I blog

It's two years now since I started blogging as a way of reflecting on our lives with Amy and recording our experiences of living in a world that felt like it had turned upside-down. And sounding off, of course, on matters large and small, personal and political.

I mostly love it. I find myself thinking, sometimes, in the middle of a bizarre conversation or a trying situation about what kind of blog-post it might make. I love the connection to all sorts of people 'out there' who are living with the same things and facing the same challenges. And it helps me explain, without having to actually explain, to family, friends and anyone who's interested what living with a severely disabled child really means for a family like ours, and how I see the world as a result.

But every now and then it makes me squirm. I wake in the middle of the night and sit bolt upright and think "I can't believe I posted that" or "How does that comment make me sound?" I worry, by turn, about being self-regarding, or trivial, or pompous, or misguided, or - worst of all - boring. Sometimes I feel slightly horrified at the whole business of 'living out loud' like this. (Even if I'm only telling a partial truth: while everything I write is true, I don't write about everything!)

Recently I've been fretting about getting the 'right' balance between positive and negative. (Whatever that might be - life is a mixture of both, is it not, with some days featuring a bit of positive and a bit of negative, as well as times when one or the other seems to go on for weeks.) I've been feeling uncomfortably exposed, as a parent who isn't patient enough, or selfless enough, or generally 'doing' enough. It's made me question the point of the whole blog-thing.

And then the other day a friend shared this quote which captures why I blog the way I do and why I think I'll carry on. It's like a blogger's manifesto:

"Being authentic is being brave enough or just candid enough to be honest about what you are experiencing and who you are, whether it is popular or not. A person gives a gift to other people when they say, 'This is what happened to me or this is how I truly feel, no matter what the popular belief is about what I should feel.' Whenever you are honest, you are speaking for a thousand silent people who don't have the voice to say what they really feel or are really experiencing. So if you ever talk about [the thing you went through], you will touch a million hearts. Because you are speaking for more than just yourself. You are never alone in what you are feeling."

Now I'm not sure about the 'thousand silent people' or the 'million hearts'. When I blog, I'm speaking for myself. But I'm trying to do it with as much honesty and authenticity as I can. Because really, what's the point of creating a perfect image of the person I'm not? It would be dull to write and, I reckon, even duller to read.