The impulse to share powerful emotions

Liz Henry — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:43:33 -0500

Todas linked recently to this intense Blogday video in Spanish and English from Melissa De Leon. I first read Melissa's blog, The Cooking Diva, a couple of years ago when she was up for an award, and I enjoyed her sparkly writing, great blog design, and her sense of humor. She travels all over the world, teaching, writing, and doing research as an innovative chef. Melissa also blogs for Global Voices on politics and on her own personal and political blog, Diablo Rojo.

In her Blogday video, Melissa talks about her love of blogging, her belief in it as something powerful and beautiful. In her four years of blogging, she has connected with many people and has become a professional blogger. The motive to share experiences drives her powerfully. She also feels a responsibility to her readers, to stay in touch, to keep writing. But for three weeks, she hasn't been able to keep blogging, because of family problems, an accident. It was very touching to hear her sadness and her feeling of wishing she could connect with her "zillion friends". Even her bad jokes in the worst of times are funny, as she clarifies for her YouTube audience that the surgery wasn't her own plastic surgery... I can so identify with the impulse for bad jokes during emotional upheaval! Sometimes those jokes really help.

I admire Melissa's citizen journalism. For example, take a look at her amazingly thorough post, also bilingual, on the earthquake disaster relief in Peru. She covered the most up to date efforts to let people know where they can help, with blood donations, equipment, volunteer work, or money, all with links and sources included. On Global Voices, she wrote a summary of news coverage and sources as well as links to bloggers from the area of the quake. I am sure her posting helped many people, though she might never know who or how.

That's a lot of responsibility to carry, feeling that you are entertaining your friends, and strangers across the world, as well as saving the world... with your blog! The pressure never stops. Meanwhile, we're all human beings with families and complicated lives. I felt honored and touched that Melissa would share even the depth of her worst of times with the blogosphere.

So, let's send good thoughts her way! Melissa, hang in there, your blog readers love you, take a break and take care of yourself and your family.

I thought I'd also mention an interesting blog from Spain, Chicas10. It's a blog by xornalismo and chica10, who are writing from prison, exercising their right to freedom of expression while in jail, and to make the lives and thoughts of prisoners more visible in society. If you don't read Spanish, try it with Google Language Tools in English, to find out the thoughts of these two women on being HIV positive, drug addiction, generational poverty, and family. It is a deeply personal blog, powerfully written - and award-winning.

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The impulse to share powerful emotions