Writing a blog about writing a blog is a bit redundant. But I often find myself wondering why I post online instead of just keeping these thoughts in a private journal, so I thought I would explore that here–in a blog post, online.
I journaled for the majority of my childhood and exclusively through my teenage years. Some days it was a short paragraph documenting that I was still alive, sometimes it was page after page of sorting through school and life and mood swings, but there was something written every day. My last official journal entry was the night before I got married.
Once I was married, I pushed pause on the daily entries so I wouldn’t be tempted to continue sorting through my life and feelings in a book, and would instead process these things with my husband. This two-becoming-one thing needed to include my life–body and head space–merging with his.
But I did keep blogging, because it was nothing secret and it didn’t keep anything from him. I blogged through my official diagnoses of anxiety and depression, I blogged through pregnancies and post-partum depression. For me, blogging was a way of processing life as I would in a conversation with a real person, hearing my thoughts aloud, to reveal and reevaluate the truths and lies therein. I share these posts in an online platform, in hopes that perhaps something I’ve struggled with or learned in the process may be of encouragement to someone reading.
Writing is an integral part of our human connection: it allows us to receive information with our emotions held back–our facial expressions don’t intercept and alter the message as we are receiving it, and we can re-read and review as often as needed. In this era of extreme social distancing, I think we need human connection more than ever.
So here I am, sharing my life online. And here you are, reading it.
May my words be glorifying to God and encouraging and challenging to you.
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jess leigh hanna 