Yikes

I've got this nice, new fancy blog and I have absolutely nothing to blog about!

I started this blog almost three years ago for the sole purpose of keeping family and friends updated on Jack's spinal fusion surgery. I kept it going because I had so many feelings and thoughts to share about this journey Jack and I are on and this blog gave me (and continues to give me) the opportunity to release these pent up feelings and thoughts and transform them into the written word. When I write one of my deeper blog thoughts, I don’t simply decide I need to write something and then sit down and pound it out in an hour. Typically, something will trigger certain feelings and thoughts that essentially run through my head continuously until I write them down. There are times after I go to bed when my brain will not shut down and I’ll get up two and three times throughout the night just to write down a sentence or two until, eventually, I’ve got a cohesive thought worth sharing.

While I love reading comments, I don’t blog for the comments. I write this blog because over the years so many people have shared with me that I write for them - them being those parents who “live the life”. There are also many people who don’t live the life who read this blog. For them, I write to share a glimpse into a life that is so demanding, so difficult and yet so rewarding in many ways.

(Okay, so I also enjoy sharing my silly Eric stories and pictures of all my awesome kids.)

I write this blog for the amazing friends I’ve met through it - some of whom I’ve met in person, some of whom I have not (yet). I know there are a lot of people, including my own family, who don’t understand what the appeal is to cyber-interacting with people you don’t know and haven’t met. The best way I can explain it is "isolation”. Generally, people can find others who share their common interests within their reach. Whether it be through work, church, their kid’s school or extra-curricular activities or through community involvement. However, parents of chronically ill/medically fragile children live a very isolated life. We are isolated physically, socially and emotionally. For the most part, we can’t walk outside our front doors and find other parents in our neighborhoods who share our unique life – parents who deal with teams of doctors, life supporting equipment, insurance companies, DMEs, IEPs, and a plethora of therapists on a regular basis. Moreover, we don’t feel comfortable sharing our lives and our struggles with typical parents because, regardless of how it’s perceived by them, we feel like whiners and complainers when talking with people who really have no idea what our life entails. The Internet opens the doors of isolation and facilitates friendships with people who share a common bond that we can’t find within arms reach.

I guess the point of this post is to say that, as I sit here today, I’ve got no pent up thoughts floating around my little brain waiting to be written and nothing noteworthy going on in our lives worth sharing. Yet, I will continue to blog for those who come here for the camaraderie, for those who come here for the laughs (aka Eric stories), for those who come here simply to see how we are doing, for those I know only through cyberspace, for those I know personally, for those I don’t know, and for those I have yet to meet.

Thank you all.