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After nearly six years of blogging--yes as a mommyblogger-- I have seen bloggers come and go, phases of what is hot and what is not, jealously between bloggers become ugly and shifts in who the "A-list" bloggers are. One question that came up in 2005 and is still being asked in 2008 is this: "Is mommyblogging a radical act?" Some say yes. Some say no. If it is a radical act, what makes it a radical act? I suppose the first thing you need to do in order to answer that question is define radical. What does radical mean to you?
Now if you look it up in a dictionary you would get something like this:
rad·i·cal: adjective thoroughgoing or extreme, esp. as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.
This week, I saw radical mommyblogging. It started with a tweet.
Then it became a flurry of emails among friends and bloggers.
It started showing up on blog posts.
Before the day was over, a very radical act of mommyblogging was well known and her blog entry had received hundreds of comments.
What radical act could possibly cause such a flurry?
One mom blogging.
One heart stopping sentence.
"I have cancer."
Lisa of Midwestern Mommy wrote those words as part of a blog entry that rocked the world of many people who have come to adore her through her blog. Many women who have been to BlogHer have met, laughed with and come to adore Lisa in person as well as through her blog. But when we read those words-- a radical departure from a typical blog post-- our hearts leapt from our chests out to her.
She wrote those words from the oncology ward of the hospital. Think about that. She was not worried about hits, rankings, or who was linking to her. She was writing her mommyblog from the hospital. She was just told she has cancer. And she shared it with us. All of us. She let us in to one of the most painful times in her life.
And we flooded her blog and her email inbox with love and support.
We circled the wagons, surrounding her with support and searched for any possible way to help her and support her.
Lisa? She is a radical mommyblogger.
And she got other moms who blog to think about their own lives.
She forced Julie of Mothergoosemouse to face one of her biggest fears.
This 35 year old woman thought she had an upset tummy, expected to
be sent home from urgent care with a roll of Tums. Instead, they sent
her to the ER, and she hasn’t left the hospital since. We don’t know
when she will....
Considering my own mortality - the idea that something might be
dreadfully wrong inside me and I don’t yet know about it - doesn’t make
me care more about crossing those tasks off my list. Really, if I’m in
the hospital, are people going to come over to my house and criticize
me silently for the condition of my baseboards?Instead, it reminds me that, more than anything else, I want to end each day feeling good about how I spent it.
It is a lesson we all need to think about. Lisa had no idea what was coming her way when she went to the ER. I am sure she probably just thought she was sick as many of us were when we came home from BlogHer.
What would I do? I would be tempted to curl up in a ball, cry and feel sorry for myself and my family. Lisa? She shared it. She blogged it. She took this bad news by the proverbial balls and refused to let it have the power over her. She blogged the hell out of it and had an outpouring of love that blew her away. It blew many of us away.
Because in the world of mommyblogging-- or whatever you want to call us-- if nothing else, we
