16 Years of Blogging
This is, believe it or not, my 16th year of blogging. My 16th blogoversary. I started writing in this space 16 years ago.
And I’ve kept it up, year after year after year. Five times per week. Year after year after year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the start of this blog because we’re once again at a crossroads. When I started this blog, the twins were giving up their bottles. And now they’re a year away from leaving for college. My heart is heavy. Melissa back then didn’t know how hard this time would be. She didn’t know those would truly be her final bottles because she would walk away from treatments a few years later without her third child. And while she could fathom that one day her kids would be grown, she couldn’t really understand how it would feel to hear them say something super clever or apply to a college or reach out to a friend in need.
Crap. I thought I was going to write about writing, but it always comes back to them.
Any time I think about not writing, I think about how I have this account of what I was thinking and feeling and going through for the majority of their life. It’s over 5000 posts and 84,000 comments, and we often scroll back through random months to find old stories — most recently the trip to the potato chip factory!
It is not too late if you haven’t written in your blog for a long time. You can do it today, and then do it tomorrow, and then maybe even the next day. And you will pop up in my feed reader because I haven’t removed you. A blog post from you would be a little gift to celebrate this milestone.
8 comments
I haven’t written in my blog for years, but I recently did the rounds of all of those that I remembered. It was heart-warming to check in on everybody. There was a period where it felt like these were our own family, our people who knew exactly what we were going through. Even over a decade later, I have 3 friends on the other side of the world who I keep up with- friendships that started as a comment on a blog.
I’m glad you are still around 🙂
Congrats on 16 years of blogging! That’s an amazing amount of work – and to continue to be interesting and not repetitive is stellar. Keep it up! I enjoy having something new to read all the time… 😀
Congratulations, Mel — what an amazing accomplishment!! & what an example you’ve set for all of us! It’s true the ALI blogging community is not what it once was — but it was (& still is!) a lot of fun, in a way that social media never could be, and it’s had a huge impact on so many people’s lives (see Bee’s comment above). You’ve been both a big part of it, and a driving force behind it. Happy, happy blogoversary, and THANK YOU! — I’ll toast you with a drink at the Lushary! 😉 xo
I’m blubbering now. It’s the eve of the 8th grade Moving Up ceremony for the child we weren’t sure we’d ever get to parent. Emotions are wonderful and deep. I’m always full of warm fuzzy feelings when I see that some of us are still out here. I haven’t even looked at my blog in forever. But I’m forever grateful for our community.
I appreciate you so, so much. Thank you for writing. <3
Your blog has meant so much to me! Threads woven through are compassion and care for other people and their feelings and experiences, help coping with grief and loss and unexpected life events, inclusion / building bridges, devotion in its many forms. Thank you Mel! Happy blogoversary!
Congratulations on 16 years! Even more impressive is maintaining the schedule of 5 blogs per week for 16 years. Brava! What an amazing record it is. Maybe part of it will become a book one day?
I’m so grateful for your presence on the interwebs! And your continued energy on your blog! After disappearing for a couple of years, it was unbelievably comforting to come back and find this space still there! Different perhaps as everyone goes through different stages of life but fundamentally unchanged.