Once Upon a Blog: an Essay About Writing

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

- WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I started blogging almost 17 years ago. At first, I didn’t even know what a blog was. But when I saw one of my favorite writers from Bon Appetit magazine had one, I decided to find out more.

With a little research, I learned a blog was kind of like a digital scrapbook. And since I’d been a teen and newlywed during the era of Creative Memories and real-life scrapbooking, I was interested in this new way of recording memories.

I already had a shelf in my closet that was filled with the old-fashioned kind of scrapbooks. The kind that required cutting pictures into shapes and taping them onto colored paper first, then onto the scrapbook pages, and then adding stickers and handwritten labels. I spent many happy hours making those books. But now that I was a mom to a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a newborn, my scrapbooking supplies were never going to see the light of day again.

Spoiler alert: they haven’t.

But I still wanted to record memories of my days with the kids. In some ways, our life felt small and normal, sometimes even mundane, but I knew that those everyday memories would one day be so special to me.

Spoiler alert: they are.

So I started a blog. And I faithfully wrote daily, adding pictures and stories for my two faithful readers, my mom, and my sister, to see. It was simple and sweet and to this day, I love that old blog. I’m so glad I captured that time of our life.

But blogging gave me another thing too. The practice of writing daily became more than just a way to record my days as a mom. It gave me space to think more deeply about the ways and whys of my mothering. I found myself beginning to write about other parts of my life: homeschooling, the adventures we took, cooking, travel, decorating our home, nature, and the books I loved reading. As I wrote about those things I discovered I wanted to share even more of my heart. And so I wrote through the grief and loneliness of a miscarriage, marriage struggles, the hard parts of mothering and womanhood. I found that sharing those parts of my story and my soul encouraged others to share too. The words of the poet Maya Angelou were so true: “The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

And here I am today, with 3 books that have my name on the front cover. I have bared more of my soul and my story than I ever imagined I could. But just like I discovered all those years ago, sharing my heart has been the fastest way to meet yours.

Some of you have been here, meeting my heart through my words on a page, from the very beginning. And some of you are just getting started. No matter what, I am so glad you are here. Who knows what’s ahead in the next 17 years? I can’t wait to see it unfold!

And I do plan to continue following this wise advice from Mary Oliver :

“Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

With joy,

Greta