Yes, believe it or not, I am still alive. Alive and kicking, complete with jazz hands.
It was over tea with a new friend a few weeks ago that I realized just long it had been. How long since I’d started this little blog, and how long it had been since I’d actually written on it.
While it wasn’t intentional, the few months I took off from writing were glorious. There’s no coincidence that these few ‘silent’ months coincided with the 3 gorgeous summer months I spent alongside my 3 favorite people…soaking up late nights and lazy mornings, lake dips and camping trips, bike trails and checkers tournaments. Which I won almost all of.
The freedom I felt, choosing to walk away from the pressure to blog regularly, exposed a need to reevaluate why I even felt the need to write in the first place.
If seasons and people and passions change, why wouldn’t our methods of expression and communication shift to accompany them? Life is a dance, is it not, filled with movement, course-correction, unexpected twerks and the occasional graceful leap.
It was a simple question she asked, between sips of tea – “what exactly is Simply Bloom, and when did you start it?” – but the answer, I realized, was not quite as simple. In sharing the backstory of this small slice of online real-estate with her, I was surprised by just how much it had evolved since its birth.
In an effort to keep our family and friends abroad updated on the arrival of our firstborn in 2007, I hopped on Blogger and started sharing our family life in sporadic word and picture form. It quickly grew into a relatively predictable “mommy blog”; recipes, crafts, printables and endless photos of chubby toddler cheeks. Blogging was exactly what my heart needed as I navigated the unpredictable waters of young motherhood. The hashing out of insecurities, the opportunity to share life with other moms as clueless as I, and the freedom it provided me to express creativity in a way I had never experienced before…I was in my element.
The interwebs were my jam, and I was soaking up all it had to offer me.
With the birth of our son in late 2009 came a shift in writing. Not just because the delight and panic of life with two young children had begun to sink in, but because life had changed drastically for our little family of four. With my hubby newly laid off from his dream job, we lost insurance, moved in with my parents, had our son…and almost lost him 10 days later. Our lives were hanging in the balance, and thanks to social media, our little world was watching and praying and waiting. As I sat on my bed at the Ronald McDonald House, where I could see our baby’s room in the Pediatric ICU across the street, I poured out the unfiltered rambling that flooded my mind. The fear, the unexplainable peace, and the eventual surrender and trust. You can read all about our son’s SVT (Supraventricular Tachycardia) experience here.
As my updates went out, the feedback poured in. It was both comforting and exhilarating to know people cared so deeply, and in the process, enjoyed reading the unedited thoughts that emerged. I had never thought of myself as a writer, so this was rather bizarre.
Blogging had turned out to be far more than a creative outlet, writing had become free therapy – for the healing of past wounds, the processing of current struggles, and for the hashing-out of the frustrations that accompany raising small humans. Cute as they may be.
As my graphic design business and speaking platform continued to grow, alongside my wee ones, the need for a formal website was apparent (I added life coaching and my book to the website in 2014, along with the launch of the We ROAR Project in early 2015). Rather than juggle several sites and businesses, Simply Bloom Productions, LLC became the umbrella over the different plates I spun.
As blog readership grew and opportunities to monetize my blog came along, I wrestled with the fact that I didn’t want to be stuck in any one category of blog and I certainly didn’t want to be dictated to by anything other than my gut. I wanted the freedom to write when my heart had something to say, and to not write when it didn’t. I had literally poured myself into my blog – writing posts in my head throughout the day, staying up late to tap them out, responding to comments and email, while looking at life through my camera lens.
But something had begun to feel unsettled in my spirit and overwhelm slowly sucked the joy out of it. The thought of spending my days taking and editing beautiful photos of my life – when I could be living it, messy and beautiful and imperfect as it was – made me ache.
For the first time on my blogging journey, I started to back-peddle. What had I gotten myself into, and did I have the ability to keep it up? Suddenly this whole thing felt more like a competition and less like a community, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out to succeed at it.
As my near-daily blogging transitioned into a weekly excuse to design a free printable and throw in a few words to accompany it, I was painfully aware of the slippery slope I had been on. I could no longer justify pouring hours into an unseen audience, checking in constantly with technology to monitor comments and stats and followers, while my babies grew up on the other side of my camera lens, editing software and carefully selected words. I was missing the small moments that really mattered in an effort to keep up with an intangible trend.
So I removed the comments section from the blog and decided to only write if I felt I truly had something significant to say. I believe there are no neutral exchanges in this life, we either add value or we take up space, and I didn’t want to spend another day simply taking up space in the name of blogging consistently, maintaining a popular online presence, or to meet the unrealistic expectations of others.
Life is too short and too precious to spend on things that, at the end of the day, don’t truly matter.
I realize this inconsistency makes me a rather crappy blogger, but I’ve decided I’d rather be an engaged wife, mom and friend in the ordinary moments of everyday life, than an exhausted editor of a polished online life. Not that these cannot coexist – and online community truly can be a beautiful thing – they just can’t seem to stay balanced on my watch.
As someone who really values words of affirmation and tends to crave validation, it’s easy for me to slip into performance mode and shift my value and significance from who I am onto how others perceive me. I have to carefully guard my heart here.
In order to write quality content, craft and create tutorials, share great photos and yummy recipes, and keep up with online community life – while simultaneously keeping my design business and speaking ministry growing – something had to give, and more often than not it was my peace, contentment, and ability to be present with my family that suffered. The honest answer to the question “how do you do it all?” is simply, “I don’t”. I dropped the ball often, and it was usually on the ones who mattered the most…but don’t register in the ratings. And that will never be worth a few moments of online fame.
Blogging was exactly what my heart needed a few years ago. Daily journaling was a huge part of my survival in those early years as a stay-at-home mom. Today, it’s a stunning platform to share my heart, when my heart has something to share. And this is what I’ve been processing lately. Speaking comes naturally to me, but writing feels like agony. While speaking is energizing, writing is exhausting. Maybe it’s the perfectionist in me that tends to edit as I write, sucking the freedom and joy right out of it, but tapping out my thoughts always feels harder that speaking them (which does make a podcast sound wildly appealing). And yet, when there’s something burning in my spirit that I cannot keep from sharing, writing provides me the perfect avenue to express it.
There are a couple of new books that have been brewing in my mind for a while now, and yet I struggle to find time to work on them AND keep up with new blog content. The weight of this drive for delivery has felt overwhelming and paralyzing at times and so I’ve found I just don’t write at all. There’s something about looming expectations – even if they’re purely self-imposed – that rob an offering of its value.
While running the blog has been a great source of creative joy, maintaining it by myself has at times felt lonely and burdensome. While I’ve turned down offers to host guest posts in years past, feeling a need to fiercely protect this sacred little space of mine, the word “collective” has started to stir in my heart. I cannot seem to shake it.
So with this question – to blog, or not to blog – still ringing in my ears, a fresh idea popped up that offered to answer it in a whole new way. While I chewed on both the burden of consistent blogging and the wealth of writing talent that surrounds me, something suddenly clicked. Some of the women I hold nearest and dearest to my heart have the most exquisite way with words, and yet have limited opportunities to express them in written form. What if we were to collaborate? What if I partnered with these amazing gals to give voice to their thoughts? Not only would it ease the writing burden for me, and create a platform for them, it would add a richness and depth in content for you that I alone could never offer.
The thought of allowing others into this sacred space was terrifying before…it’s wildly exhilarating now. For such a time as this. What a stunning win-win-win.
All this to say, sweet friends, as Simply Bloom has changed and evolved over the past several years, it will continue to grow and blossom in the future. I cannot wait to introduce you to a few of my favorite voices; dearest friends who will be sharing their thoughts and struggles and stories with you. Not daily. Maybe not even weekly. But as the time is right, as our words are ripe, and as I pray…right when you need to hear them. Because who really cares about stats and because God is sneaky like that.
And wait, there’s more! I’ve grown so much as an entrepreneur and business owner these past 2 years that as I’m learning to strip away the clutter and silence the fear of failure, I’m discovering what my heart truly yearns to do. God has brought the most wonderful group of business women into my life, and together we’re bravely tackling our missions and fleshing out our unique life purposes. With their wisdom and encouragement, I’ve decided to step out and try something new… an online store (yeah baby!). I’ll be offering prints, cards, mugs, candles and jewelry that, up until now, I’ve sold exclusively at speaking engagements.
The Simply Bloom shop is due to open in mid-October, just in time for Christmas shopping (woo hoo!), so stay tuned.
My tagline a few years ago was “blooming where I’m planted, poop and all”, and it perfectly expressed where I was at the time; knee-deep in diapers, cheerios and back-burner dreams. Today our tagline is “where passion & purpose collide” because Simply Bloom exists to empower women to embrace their stories, live their passions and love their lives. And this is exactly what we, as a collective, intend to do.
So hold on, friends! It’s going to be an exciting journey forward.
