On Blogging - 145 Posts Later

I started this blog on one of the darkest, most heart-wrenching days of my life. It was Mother's Day, my first Mother's Day, and my only child was dead.

Some people IRL have asked why I turned to blogging, and honestly, I don't think I had a choice. For one thing I was running out of paper. There wasn't a journal, notebook, piece of junk mail, or page in our telephone book that hadn't been scrawled on with poetry and prose about how it felt to lose my beautiful little Peyton.

I didn't know what I would write about here. How often, or even if anyone would ever read it. What I knew at the time was that I needed to write. And write. And write. I told someone earlier tonight that my writing became like the shoulder of an old friend, ever ready for me to lean on.  

I had read once that every time a page is published to the web, it becomes a permanent fixture regardless of whether or not you erase it. I guess in that way I found comfort too, knowing that Peyton's story would live on, even if only as some mess of binary code stored somewhere out in cyber space. It may sound silly to some, but when your child has left this earth so quickly after entering it, every imprint she leaves feels significant.

Tonight I went back and read some of my earliest posts and made a few discoveries. The first was a realization, the second, a gift.

The realization was about the permanence of my situation. Regardless of what happens in our future, this experience of loving and losing Peyton has left me forever changed. Sure I can breathe a little easier than I used to, and at times I even find myself braving cautious optimism, but the shift that I felt when Peyton took that last breath was just as organic and lasting as I knew in my heart that it would be.

There are posts that I wrote back then, seven months into my grief, that seventeen months in feel as if they could have been penned today. I guess in that way I still feel the way I did last May when I wrote in Moving On:

I cannot move on, as so many have suggested, I can only move with. And for now, that is what I am exhaustingly working towards; trying to find a way to live this life; to find joy in it once again and to see our dreams fulfilled with Peyton. With the memory of her, with that little spirit, with her unguarded love, and even with the unrelenting pain of her loss. 

I guess the more I remind myself that there can still be forward movement, even with all that has happened, the better.

The gift from going back to those older posts came in the form of this poem. It reminded me about so many of the beautiful aspects of mothering Peyton that grief over losing her was stealing from my memory. Just as finding the picture that I wrote about brought the gift of remembering to me back then, re-reading the poem tonight gave me that same gift all over again.

This little trip down blogging memory lane got me to thinking about other bloggers and what their blogs have meant for them, and so I am posing this question to be answered with your comments, for no other reason than I am just sort of curious. This question, of course, is open to all bloggers, not just those who blog about loss, and blog readers alike.

Beyond the wonderful support of this amazing community, what do you feel is the greatest gift that blogging (reading or writing them) has given you?