Let me tell you a story. It’s about a girl who grew so afraid of what people might think of her, she became paralyzed in that fear.

It starts with a back story.

This girl was born to be a storyteller, stemming from an early love of reading. It began with stories read to her in her mother’s lap, graduated to recognized words on the milk carton, and finally came to fruition when she read the book, Jack and the Beanstalk, to her preschool teacher. At just 4 years old, this girl was a reader! And two years later, upon learning to write, she realized she could create stories, as well. At night when she went to bed, she entertained her sister in their shared bedroom with made-up bedtime stories using a flashlight and shadow puppets. At birthdays and holidays, her gifts of stories were always highly anticipated. And she swore that one day when she was grown, her career would encompass her love of words and storytelling.

Fast forward a dozen or so years, and life continued to happen. But the path this girl was on twisted and turned in directions she hadn’t anticipated. Never being one to make risky moves, she allowed this path to take her from her dreams. It ended up being the riskiest move of all. While her goal had been to remain in her comfort zone, her path, instead, brought her into unfamiliar places and moments of danger and despair. It came time for her to decide – refrain from making a change and lose herself in the process, or make an uncomfortable bold move and try to find the person she lost.

She chose the latter, leaving her to raise two young kids on her own when she left a suffocating, abusive marriage.

It would take a year before this girl was able to drag herself off the couch. It took a few more for her to feel even remotely human. And eventually, with the love and support of her family, she was back out in the world on her own, caring for her kids the best way she could, and surviving life as a single mother, flaws and all.

It was during this time that this girl rediscovered her writing voice. It started with just writing. Then it was telling personal tales to amuse her friends. Eventually it migrated into a blog she called Wine Country Mom. The title was a little tongue-in-cheek, as she was definitely a mom in the heart of the Wine Country, but she was hardly living the Wine County lifestyle. There were some weeks she wasn’t sure the food in her household would last to the end of the week. And if it weren’t for her generous parents’ endless supply of TP, bathroom time would be plenty awkward. But there were many good times in this poor season of life, and countless moments of laughter, as well. This girl wrote about all of that – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Through her writing, she made friends with people who could relate to her triumphs and sorrows.

This new community of readers weren’t the only people who noticed. The local newspaper, where this girl now worked in the ad department, caught wind of this girl’s blog. And because they loved it, they offered this girl an even larger platform to share her stories. Naturally, this girl said yes.

In the following years, this girl continued to share her stories, now with a larger audience. She wrote about life as a single mother, parenting tips she’d learned along the way, her budding romance with a new man (who would one day be her husband), and the transition her life took from single parenthood into blended family. She remained perfectly candid, a virtue that drew her audience in as she admitted imperfections, as well as the beautiful parts of her family despite their many flaws. She remained real, vulnerable, completely raw. There were times she’d hesitate before pushing that publish button, then hold her breath when she inevitably did. It was a terrifying and exhilarating feeling to bare so much of her soul. And much of the feedback she received was from people who were certain they were the only ones who’d ever experienced what she had written about, and found a soul sister in this girl through the truth she’d unveiled.

But not everyone loved this girl’s brave sharing.

Ever hear of trolls? These are little creatures with wrinkled souls who hide under the bridges of blogs as they wait for their next victim. Their main objective is to ensure no one feels too good about themselves. They plant the seed of hate, then entice people to water it through conversation. Their biggest tool is to write things so hateful, it’s almost impossible to ignore. But once you respond to a troll, you lose power. And the troll? They only grow stronger.

When your platform consists of the same people who read the newspaper, the trolls are aplenty (and if you’ve ever read the comments on any article on any newspaper, you know what I mean).

Among the lovely people who offered lovely words to any of this girl’s blog articles, there were also ugly-souled people who attacked her choice to leave her abusive husband and become a single mother, her blossoming romance with a new man while she was supposed to be caring for her kids, and anything else they could find fault with in the words she chose to share about her personal life. This girl remained strong, though all of these words stung. It was like the trolls had discovered all of her inner thoughts and fears, and were now laying them out in the comments of her blogs for the world to digest. Each comment inflicted pain, but she strengthened her armor and kept going. However, when the trolls turned their comments toward this girl’s children, she pulled the plug to her blog. The girl removed her blog from the newspaper and said goodbye to the audience she had built. Then she began blogging in a much more private arena. No one knew her. No one commented. No one said mean things, nice things…anything.

But this was just fine with the girl. It allowed her that perfect break to come back to center and figure out what exactly she wanted to share with the world. With her kids now in their teen years, it was no longer appropriate to write about them on a family blog. It seemed Wine Country Mom had run its course.

Meanwhile, this girl had tackled a new arena of writing – the almighty novel. She set up a website as she put forth her new novel, complete with a brand new blog. But with this blog, the girl found herself in unfamiliar territory. What the heck did she write about? She’d spent so long writing about her life as a mother, that writing about her life as a writer felt foreign and strange. She had no audience, no one who was familiar with her work, no one to talk to at all through this blog. She began writing about her book, but that got old fast. She felt uninteresting. So she began writing about writing itself, specifically in terms of books. But she felt like a fraud because she was still figuring this stuff out, herself.

The blog soon felt like an albatross. She was reading so many tips on keeping an author blog that she started to feel like everything she wrote in her blog was all wrong. Soon, she lost her reason for even wanting to keep a blog at all. It wasn’t about baring pieces of her soul anymore, it was about how to get attention. It all felt fake and contrived. It felt like work. And when January of this year hit, this girl stopped writing in her blog altogether.

This girl, of course, being ME.
So here I am, having ignored this blog because I’m afraid I have nothing to say, or that I’m boring people with the bits and pieces of my life, or that I might give you the wrong idea if I have an opinion on anything, or that I might get too personal, or I might not be personal enough. I’m afraid someone I know will read this blog and wonder who the heck I think I am trying to fool. I’m afraid someone I don’t know will read this and wonder how someone who thinks the way I think or writes the way I write or likes the things I like ever thought she could actually write a book and sell it. I’m afraid I’ll break some cardinal rule of author blogs by oversharing or undersharing or writing against my genre or being too opinionated or wishy-washy or attracting the wrong people or not being witty enough….

Omg. It’s just too much! I’m done with being paralyzed. I’m done with thinking there’s someone I’m supposed to be or something specific I’m supposed to write about. I’m done with thinking I need to be writing to a certain group of people or write a certain way when all I can do is be myself and write the way I write.

The end!

So from this day forward, I declare this a themeless blog. If I want to write about books, I’ll write about books. If I was to write about faith, I will write about faith. If I want to write about life, especially the messy parts, you’re damn straight I’ll be writing about life. If I want to write about love, family, my dog, how much I hate cleaning, what I had for dinner, my favorite TV obsession, an author I’m crushing on (Hi Colleen Hoover!), or anything else, I’m just going to throw it up here on the pages.

You all right with that? Doesn’t matter. 😉

Let’s just be real, k?