Why Did I Start This Blog?

So what first prompted me to start this blog?? That's an easy one, I decided to start blogging when I lost my son. But it wasn't as simple as that really.

I was a total stranger to the blogging world. I knew about celebrity blogs like PerezHilton.com because I am a sucker for any kinds of celebrity news. I knew a couple of friends who had blogs, but mostly they were designed so that friends and family who lived far away could see what they were up to. I also had a friend who was setting up a blog to help promote a new business idea she had. But it never occurred that the blogging world was one for me.

One day I was having lunch with a new friend who as it turns out is in the publishing business. She was telling me about her job and the writers she works with. I was sharing my grief  with her. It was at that moment that she asked me this question.

"Do you write?" she asked. My answer, "Well I update my status on Facebook." She said, "You should start a blog about what you are going through, it would be really good for you to get your feelings out."

I was very hesitant at first. I've never been a diary kind of gal and the idea of writing about my innermost feelings and then releasing them for the internet to see is a pretty scary one. I had flashbacks to the 12 year old me when my little sister showed my diary to our babysitter who was two years older than me. In it I had written about a boy that I liked and this babysitter knew him. Total humiliation. So I told her no, I didn't want to write a blog because I was a very private person.

But the idea stuck. Maybe I should start a blog? Maybe getting my feelings out on paper (so to speak) would be good for me? Maybe it would help me heal? Maybe it would help me feel "normal" again.

The idea brewed in my head for about a week. It was the week before we we were flying home to see the family for the first time since losing our son. It should have been a happy trip, one where we were introducing our infant son to our family. Instead it was a trip home with his ashes. A trip to have his ashes blessed instead of having him baptized. It was going to be one of the hardest trips of my life.

And that's when I knew that I needed to write. Not for anyone else to read necessarily, but for me. I needed a release, I needed an outlet. I needed a blog. So I wrote this post about how hard it was to pack for this trip, the one that should have been for 3 people but was now just for 2.

And I haven't looked back since.