What To Say?

 Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

I got an email the other day from someone who read the blog and just wanted to check on us. They noted I hadn't posted anything in... months. 

I miss this space in so many ways--I've been printed my archives in one-year volumes which are HUGE (like 250+ pages) and so, so dear in the way they trace my grief and then the babyhood of Zuzu and Coco. I feel guilty for not publicly journaling Gee in the same way, and yet the public side of the blog is what cuts both ways. Like many bloggers, I have felt a need to turn inward and not share so much, but I HATE when my favorite bloggers have done this because I love their voices and seeing their kids and it's all such a bummer that the internet can be a sucky place. At the same time, the community on this blog quite literally saved me in my darkest days, and that's just not there with blogs anymore. Engagement doesn't really happen in blog comments--definitely not the way it used to--and it feels even more navel-gazing than usual to blog out to nobody. 

So I post on Instagram mostly, but it's a personal account, not a babyloss account, and I keep it private because it's just photos of my kids and sharing memes I think are funny or posts that provoke my political outrage. 

I've actually been doing a lot of writing this year, post-publication of my Eliza memoir, but I'm working on a novel--a murder mystery work of fiction that I'm having fun with even though writing a novel is, like, really super hard!

So I've hesitated to return here to post... anything. Do I want a dramatic good-bye post? But what if I want to come back? How do I even begin to write a post knowing it would be the final blog post? I hate endings and good-byes. I don't know. I think that pressure--combined with the weirdness of writing into a void instead of entering a conversation in the comments--has kept me away or posting elsewhere, even when I've had thoughts I'd like to write out in blog form.

This is not a conclusion, but I guess it's a placeholder. I don't plan to blog as much going forward, and I appreciate that there are a few people who still would read here and miss it! I am so incredibly grateful for everyone who read hundreds of posts over more than a decade of blogging. I'm not sure I'm finished, but I'm also putting energy into other things right now. Blogging isn't the same anymore, and that's okay, too. What will never change is how thankful I am that this corner of the internet exists, that people read it and wrote "me too" in the comments, that it connected me to lifelong friends and convinced me that all over the world there are grieving people who are still going around being good and kind and generous. And I hope that I can be one of them.

Whatever comes next, I will keep you posted here. I can assure you that my little family is doing okay and most days I feel like the luckiest unlucky person who ever lived. Eliza's 11th birthday is approaching and I won't be surprised if I need to process some feelings here, too. 

xoxo