“People who say blogging isn’t important can kiss my ass!”

–Annisa at BlogHer10 during the blogging through grief and loss session.

I’m back home now, and my thoughts and pictures are now coming to you wholly out of order based on what is on my mind as I sit down at the computer.  I have a lot of pictures to download from the camera, a lot of stories to still tell.

Instead of keeping in order, I will jump over Friday and land in the middle of Saturday afternoon.

It is impossible to sit through an hour-long discussion on grief and loss without a lump in your throat.  It is impossible not to grieve with the person as they describe their loss, and it is equally impossible to not think of the people you know who aren’t here.  When there is a five-minute discussion on death, you can skate through the words without your body reacting.  But sit with a discussion on loss for an hour, and you will find that your neck changes.

It felt important to be there, as if there was only one possible place I could be during this session slot.  Though I couldn’t tell you why.  I think my main reason to be there was for Cecily because I don’t think she has been allowed to grieve as deeply and as cleanly (or, perhaps a better term, messily) as she needs.  I think people stick their hands in her grief by turning her loss into a political issue.  And because of that, I wanted to be there and have her see that tangible support because I love her.  And the reason could be, I decided, as simple as that.

Someone expressed before the session that she was afraid the session would become a cult of grief — not the panel so much as the audience.  Because the Internet has a tendency to do that.  We do it and we need to own it.  We start reading someone after the loss occurs because we see everyone else reading them.  And suddenly we are there, talking about it, grieving with them, jumping into the loss — and we take it to a deep place even though our connection rises out of a shallow trench.  I’ve written about how others process your loss on the Internet before.

(Sidenote: I am not talking about grieving along someone you have known — even online friends — but opening up the relationship with grief.)

And is it wrong to jump into a stranger’s grief?  Well, yes and no.  I mean, I have passed by someone in pain in a public space, someone I don’t know at all, and I have sat down and spoken with them and listened to their story and cried with them, and said goodbye and moved on.  Because we’re human and many of us cannot see someone in pain and simply walk by.  We can do the same on the Internet with words as our virtual hug.

With the exception of the fact that support often comes initially and then disappears except for a random few, I don’t think there is much negative that comes to the griever who mourns with the support of the Internet.  Some have said that there can never be a negative side of support, but I think there is for those who observe an outpouring of support and then later grieve and don’t receive that support they noticed earlier on given to other people.

In other words, I don’t think support can ever damage the grieving person, but I think it can damage the future griever when the future griever notices what can sometimes become a cult of grief — an outpouring that goes well beyond the initial reach of the griever in terms of how many people they know or who know them — but the future griever doesn’t receive that same kind of support for their own pain.

Which, of course, is not to say that those outpouring shouldn’t happen for the first griever, but simply to be mindful of the future grievers as well.  That all people deserve support.

I think this session did the same good work that Glow in the Woods does — it provided a space for people to sit with their own grief, to get comfortable with the idea of reaching out to another person and comfort them, to discovering the right and wrong things to say.

I managed to not cry until Eden spoke.  I don’t know why.  She wasn’t even saying anything particularly upsetting, but I was remembering this night when Josh and I were at the food store and I was telling him about a post with Dave’s cancer and AA meetings and I’m not sure what else, and I remember standing near the dead chicken part section of the food store (apologies, as a vegetarian, I mentally divide the food store into edibles and dead things) and sobbing while I told him about something that moved me in that post, and I was suddenly reminded of it hearing her speak and I felt the tipping point occur, where the tears finally came.

And was it — as the person who raised the question of the cult of grief also feared — what amounts to a grief boner?  Well, no.  It wasn’t.  It was catharsis.  It was full circle.  It was coming home again.  I can say that because I lived it and I know how it felt in the moment.

Annisa said the quote at the top of the post and it’s true.  Blogging is important.  And possibly an even more brilliant quote came from Kim who said, “I don’t talk about it like this [and pointed to her mouth], I talk about it like this [and pretended to type].”

And that is perhaps the most important message I took away from both the panel and the hug that came from Eden at the end of the talk.  That there is a reason we all write and it is because we need to write in order to make sense of our world.  Our words are out there just as much for ourselves as they are for others.

And that is perhaps also the source for placing our hands in someone else’s grief.  Because we know how our grief feels in our body (and everyone experiences personal grief), and perhaps, when we involve ourselves in another person’s grief, we are merely touching their grief to see if it feels similar to our own.  And it is just another small echo of “me too” that we take and give.

By the second session of BlogHer10, I was exhausted.  My nervous system felt inflamed from the constant stream of people, the constant stream of information, the constant stream of opportunities rushing by you at any given moment.  You could turn in this direction and speak to this person who just may write the blog that will change your whole life, or you may turn in that direction and meet a food blogger who will pass along her pie crust recipe.  You just don’t know.

And the choices, the endless choices of which sessions to attend and where to sit and how long to talk and what to do with your day is the best and worst part of the conference.  Because you can’t really go wrong–all the roads take you somewhere–but it is easy to start walking down one path and wonder what is on all the roads not taken, and somehow miss the path you are on entirely because your focus is elsewhere.

It is an ongoing process of reminding myself to stick to the road I’m on.  To take what I need.  To enjoy myself rather than trying to do everything.

New York is a strange city for me.  It was one of my retreats during graduate school, but I can’t really say that I love the city.  I’m not a New York person.  Plus, I find my figurative battery draining the second I get through the Holland Tunnel.  By the time I hit midtown, I’m a puddle on the floor of the bus.  I literally can’t comprehend how I’m going to do anything beyond lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.  No other city drains me like this one.

And, at the same time, I am having a lot of fun.  I spent Thursday night at two parties.  The first was one for BlogHer editors.

Devra at Parentopia

Devra from Parentopia and Sarah from Sarah and the Goon Squad

Laurie from LaurieWrites

Minnie, Deb, and Genie

Liz and Me

Suzanne and Paula

Sarah talking to Erin’s Head

Talking to Erin’s Head

Honeybeast and Devra

Devra’s weird shoes…

AV and the butt plug shoes

AV Flox

After dinner, I went over to Alexa’s hotel room to celebrate the release of her book, Half Baked.  The book looks incredible and I can’t wait to read it.  We stood out on the wrap around balcony and admired the city below, and I felt awfully small amongst the enormous buildings and endless lights.  We ate cupcakes.  We met up with friends.

City lights

Look at those lovely books.

Alexa!

With Heather

Kate talking with Amy

Heather

We returned to the hotel and met up with Lori and her sister, sharing a single cupcake well into the night that I completely missed photographing for the Cake Extravaganza (and an enormous thank you to the people who participated so far).  All in all, a lovely evening.  Next post–onto the sessions, the ALI lunch, and beyond.

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to you

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to you

July 21st marked four years

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to yooooooooou.

Welcome to the 300th (fine…200th) Friday Blog Roundup.  As I said in the first Roundup* back on July 21, 2006,

Every time I read something I love, I want to send it out to everyone I know. Which is how I came to the idea to do the Friday Blog Roundup and comment publicly on a few things I read this week. There is plenty that I read that also moved me, but since space is limited, I must pick-and-choose.

(This is the same post where a young Melissa says, “golly gee, I sure would like to start an organized blogroll if I could figure it out!”)

What the Roundup meant four years ago is still what it means today: they are simply posts that I read during the week that stuck with me.  They are not all the posts I read that stuck with me, but they are four or five that floated to the top when I sat down to write the Roundup.  And I set them out there simply because I hope that you too will read these posts if you missed them the first time, or nod in agreement if they moved you too, and then jump into the comment section on that post and let the author know.

300 (okay, 200) posts later, and that last concept, sadly, hasn’t truly caught on.  So let’s remedy that for the next 200 posts.  If you click over to read (and for the love, you should click over to read because you’d want people to do the same if a post from your blog was here and hopefully, I do a decent job of remembering who has been featured and who hasn’t and keeping it fresh each week), please leave the author a comment.  Answer their question, let them know you’re abiding with them, tell them how hard you laughed.  The Roundup has always been about community discussion.  And it has been way too quiet.

So make a commitment to let one or two of the author’s know each week that you liked their writing if you did (it goes a long way in keeping someone writing), and now, let’s get this party started.

As I’ve been saying all week, to participate in the celebration, upload a picture of a piece of cake (and don’t get hung up on the words “a piece of cake” — if you want to bake a whole cake or celebrate with an oreo or simply walk by the bakery and take a picture and not put anything in your piehole, it’s all good) and then link to your blog post.  It would be lovely if you wrote something about what community means to you.  Why you love being part of the ALI community, and how you feel when you read a particularly satisfying blog post.  If you don’t have time to write a short post, simply post the picture of the cake and a link to your blog’s main url to show your presence at this virtual party. 

The party will be open until next Thursday night.  Check back to see who is in attendance.  And then mingle.

Thank you for celebrating with me.  Here’s to four more years.

* Thank you to those first Roundupers: Dead Bug, Richard (who has a breathtaking post at the top of his blog right now), Carrie, and Serenity.

*******

No Weekly What If this week because I want to jump back into the party once I tell you about this week’s posts.

*******

And now, the blogs…

The Miss Ruby has a post about not recognizing herself anymore and how we can never truly return to who we were before infertility.  We can only try to grab back what we can from that old life and mesh it with the new one.  And she asks a good question at the end: “when was the last time you looked into your soul & heart and saw who you really are?”

Big Love, Big Acceptance has a post about emotionally drowning.  Observing a baby at a nearby table interacting with her mother, BLBA admits how much she wants that and says, “I just wanted no one to talk to me, no one to look at me – like if these things were avoided, I could disappear. No one would notice the tears welling up in my eyes, or the tightness of my face as I tried to hold it all together.”  It is a post that lays bare all of her fears, and you will cry with her honesty.

Baby Magnesi has a brief post about the stupidity of the idea that a person can just focus on something else.  As if people have perfect control over their thoughts and emotions.

Lastly, My Infertility Woes has a post about how she has returned (after a brief hiatus) to liking kids.  I love the distinction she makes as well as her ability to take care of herself and take the time she needs.  It is not an either/all situation–it is merely a response to the moment.

Tucking whatever BlogHer posts I’m moved to write today (as well as pictures and video) below this one to keep the Roundup party post at the top of the blog.  So if you are following the conference at home, return later in the day and use the BlogHer Diaries tag in order to find all the posts.  And you know, while you’re here, you can see who else is celebrating the Roundup and visit their blog.

The roundup to the Roundup: Celebrate good times, come on!  And lots of good blogs to read.  Back later for more entries from the conference.

Kicking off my pre-travel day to BlogHer with a post about unplugging. Which is sort of strange because I am not only shlepping a laptop, camera, and Flip video with me so I can document my experience at the conference, but I am bringing a USB modem so I can have Internet every second of the day.

Sometimes when I travel, I bring my own coffee and that seems to be a tip-off that there is an addiction.  The inability to trust that coffee will be obtainable at the travel location, the need for the caffeine level that comes from my beans.  And bringing a USB modem reveals that Internet addiction.  There will be WiFi at the hotel.  And yet I still bring my own Internet access with me.  Addiction.

Which is why I was drawn to Gwen Bell’s July experiment.  She partially unplugged for the month; only partially because her work is online and this wasn’t a desire to leave work behind, but instead, to find that balance between the online world and the offline world.  So she shut off Twitter, she set limits to checking email, she stopped writing blog posts.

The link will take you to her first dispatch after the end of her digital sabbatical.  It’s a fascinating read.  She starts out writing Tweets on paper so she can still feel that documentation high, and she ends with seeing the beauty of life slowed down and the pressure of immediacy removed.  Which I assume is a lot like a self-hosted blog vs. a free Blogger blog.  They may not look all that different to the outsider or reader, but for the blog owner, it is a completely different process and emotion.

It is a very interesting read.

I would think the largest benefit that can come from filtering out all the noise of the Internet is creating a space where you can find your own comfort zone. I say this as someone who has only unplugged for about a week at a time.  Which isn’t really long enough to learn the lessons Gwen did during her digital sabbatical, but I’m also probably not online as often as Gwen.

There is so much we do because we think we should: emails we send, Tweets we make, sites we join, conferences we attend (hey!)…and sort of most important–stuff we write that we post without knowing how comfortable we are with sending it out there.  I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I do have some.  There have been times that people have trespassed into my comfort zone simply because either I didn’t state the boundaries clearly or I didn’t even know them myself.

I have always been fairly circumspect online and try not to post things I think will bite me in the ass later.  I try not to hurt people’s feelings online; sometimes I’m successful with that and sometimes I’m not, and sometimes, I frankly can’t own the hurt feelings because I will never be able to please everyone else while remaining true to myself and my own thoughts.  There are things that are true now, which I may reconsider in the future and don’t want this Google-able opinion documented for years to come.

But even knowing these things–feeling grounded in these beliefs–it is too easy to ignore what you know you should do for what you think you should do.  Because one part of that addiction is that the pressure is so great.  It’s not even a true pressure of dealers offering you a free taste so you’ll buy the whole bag; it’s a self-created pressure that we believe with our whole heart even if we know that it’s not based in rational facts.  After all, as much as we may be jealous about Twitter relationships we perceive between people or how much traffic we think another blog has, we rarely know the full picture.  Our pressure is based in assumptions.

Raise your hand if you signed up with Twitter or Facebook because you were interested in Twitter or Facebook.

Now raise your hand if you signed up for Twitter or Facebook because you saw that a lot of other people were on there who you admired and you didn’t want to get left behind.  Or you signed up because you heard it was a great way to promote your blog posts and you’re frustrated by the lack of traffic it has brought.  Or you signed up and hate it because you can see that thousands of people are following so-and-so, and 10 are following you and YOU ARE 20 TIMES MORE AMUSING THAN SO-AND-SO, but you also can’t leave Twitter because 10 followers are better than the “no followers” you would have if you closed your account.

Do you see what I mean about Internet addiction?  I liked Gwen’s first update and look forward to reading the rest because as she says, doing the experiment sort of only matters if you take lessons learned and keep using them.  I’m dragging her thoughts as well as my own into the conference, and trying to spend a lot of time thinking and listening as I meet up with old friends and new.

Where would you rate your Internet addiction and how much does it inform your choices on how you spend your time on the Web (as well as what feelings–jealousy, anger, sadness, love, gratitude–remain with you after you’ve logged off)?