I'm Still Here

When someone you love is gravely ill, it’s tempting not to blog, to throw in the towel for Nablopomo.

My dad, as some of you know, is not doing well. This may be the time he doesn’t come home from the hospital.

I’m going to keep blogging, if I possibly can. There's a gospel song on my MP3 player called "I'm Still Here," and that's my anthem today.

Many of you Nablopomo-ers  have written about what blogging means to you, and the rest of us have been nodding our heads, saying yes, me too. I don’t intend for this to be a long post about blogging—I don’t have that in me right now.

But, I will say this.

Blogging has given me a support group at a time when I wasn’t sure anyone else on the planet felt the way I did. I was lonely and desperate, even with loving, well-meaning people around me. Depressed, menopausal, overwhelmed.

Blogging, and in particular, the women I’ve met through Blogher, did nothing less than save me.

In varying stages of life, with different backgrounds and perspectives, we don’t all share the same experiences—we’re a "proud to be quirky" lot.  Yet sometimes the similarities are startling between us, in ways small and large.

We are all willing to take chances. We write. We read. We listen. We laugh. We respect. We encourage. We dream. We love.

I can feel the power of this, and it helps sustain me. I can’t give it, or you, up.

Thank you: readers, writers, friends.