Someone recently asked me if it bothered me that I am sharing so much of my life through my blog and Instagram. If you look at me now, you probably think it doesn’t bother me at all. I am super blunt when I tell people to read my blog, and if you do read my blog you know that I don’t hold much information back. But it wasn’t always this way, there was a point that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my life with everyone. In fact, the day I found out they had found cancer in my stomach I only told a handful of people that were very close to me. It took me almost two weeks to finally announce the news on Instagram, I never even posted the news on Facebook. And at the time the last thing on my mind was this blog. See, I made this blog 42 days before my surgery. And I made it on a whim. I had no idea what I planned to do with it, I didn’t know if people would actually read it, and I had no idea what I would even write about (considering at the time I still had a stomach so there wasn’t much to say except I was terrified for my upcoming surgery). My blog is not even paid for, I do not own the domain name for it. I am doing this 100% for free because I honestly just don’t have the money to invest in it right now, and also because I didn’t make this blog to pay to write. I made it so I could channel everything I was feeling into words that I wasn’t able to speak out loud.
To be totally honest I never really planned on using the blog after I made it and wrote my very first post. I only started using it again when my best friend suggested that I start blogging once a day to document what I was going through. That day I made my post titled “June 12, 2019”, the post that talked about my surgery and me discovering I had cancer. When I started to write the post, the words flowed out of me so easily it was like I was writing in a diary. I didn’t promote that post; I wrote that post for me. So many details of what happened in the hospital were unknown to the people close to me that weren’t there. I told a few people that I had written it and that they could read it if they wanted to, but I was nervous that the reaction would be negative. Everyone fears rejection and criticism, and I am just like everyone. I feared that this blog wouldn’t connect to people, or that people just wouldn’t care, or they would think I was a terrible writer. All of those thoughts crossed through my head, I was so scared of the possibility of rejection that I almost didn’t continue making posts. But my best friend, Erin, kept telling me to do a post a day. She said “even if its just for yourself, make it a goal to write once a day”, and I promised her I would.
After some people read my post about being in the hospital, and I got really positive feedback, I started to promote the blog through Instagram. I’m sure if you follow me you have seen a million stories that say “LINK IN BIO”, and I’m sorry to say that those stories wont stop. I have come across multiple people that have CDH1, like me, through this blog. And some of these people are actually able to relate to things that I went through and wrote about. Just this morning a man messaged me and told me that he read my post titled “I basically overdosed on Vitamin B”, and he was having the same reaction I had to ingesting B12 orally. I was honestly so surprised that this happened to another person, but I was also so happy that I was able to provide him with an answer. And to let him realize that he is not the only person that has had the same problems he is experiencing. It is such a rewarding feeling to know that my stories are impacting other people’s lives, I never thought this blog would result in any of that.
Does it bother me that I put my life out there for everyone to know? I would say in some ways yes it does bother me a little, but would I change it? Absolutely not. I want this blog to be 100% honest. In some of my earlier posts I felt like I held back the reality of how hard living without a stomach is. Then one day I was so sick and I had enough, that’s when I wrote my post “SHIT JUST GOT REAL”. It finally hit me, I was sugar coating my recovery, and I had finally had enough of making it seem easier than it is. I realized that if I wanted to make this blog a serious investment of my time then I needed to be real for the people that were going to read it. I owed it to them to be honest about everything, even if it meant revealing some personal aspects of my life. I think that’s something that makes this blog so different than others that I have seen. I am not selling anything, I am not promoting products, I am just telling you exactly what life is like when you don’t have a stomach. Plain and simple. And I have come to find that people love the honesty I show through my writing, because a lot of people are genuinely interested.
I admit that I am still shy when it comes to sharing my blog, I mean I have been writing in it for a while now and just this morning I announced the link on my Facebook for the first time. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for all of my family to read it, because I admit I still get nervous that people will hate it. All of this is so new to me, I have never written for an audience before. And I’ll be honest I looked at other bloggers blogs, and some of them are professionally made and look amazing in comparison to mine. It can be super intimidating when you compare yourself to other people, but I have to remember that whatever they’re blogging about is not the same thing that I am blogging about. We aren’t the same person, and I wouldn’t want it to be that way. I am proud of my blog, I am proud that I put myself out there for everyone to see, I am proud of how far I have come and how open I am with everyone. If you want me to write about something specifically shoot me a message, I am an open book and I would love to share anything about this stomachless life with you. At first I was scared, but now I have nothing to hide.
The picture I chose for this post is me trying to take a super cute shot while jumping in the air, well obviously that didn't work out well. Just another example of me not being afraid for y'all to see me fail, I am becoming OK with letting my guard down.