For Gil, Who Introduced Me to Blogging

In making the big move over to WordPress, I wanted to take a minute to thank the woman who introduced me to blogging. Before there was Mel’s ALI Blogroll, before there was The SITS Girls, before my video, before meeting and getting to connect with so many of you, before all of that…

There was Gil at The Hardest Quest.

This story starts in 2009, in the wilds of LiveJournal. I wrote as OpheliasMusing back then. I had been writing on LiveJournal for several years, taking a break immediately after I graduated college and then got back into it shortly after I got engaged. In those later years on LJ, I was mostly participating in the LJ communities more than posting in my actual journal.

I was diagnosed on March 18, 2009. I immediately wrote about it on my LiveJournal, in a vague, cryptic post:

I’m still in shock, and not really ready to talk about it here yet… i have received some extremely unfortunate news. i am disabling comments only b/c i will post at a later date/time with more information as i become able to handle it, quite honestly. right now, i’m entering this into my journal for posterity. i’m going to try to get through the rest of my day as best i can. i have a lot of research ahead of me, and i suspect, a lot of tears.

I had posted this literally about an hour after I had opened the email from my doctor.

Later that evening, I posted again:

premature ovarian failure.

i am watching futures never happen. my mind is racing to consider the alternatives. my brain in wrapping itself around my worst nightmare. my husband is sad. he assures me he loves me no less, and i believe him. i have no reason not to, despite the fact that children of our own might never be a possibility. i am 26 years old, and entering early onset menopause. i’m still struggling to even say that to myself. the unthinkable has happened, and i am left reeling in its wake.

(Even two and a half years later, it is still very hard for me to read these original posts. The emotion was so recent at the time I wrote, it’s like reliving the diagnosis all over again each time I read them.)

The next day, I turned to the places I knew where I would find support online: my LJ communities. I joined fertilityissues and infertilees and posted my obligatory introduction posts. After my verbose intro at fertilityissues, I ended my introduction with a simple question:

How do you cope?

(It seems so naïve really, just six days after my diagnosis. Like I’m asking such a simple question as if there’s a nice, easy answer to wave the pain away with a magic wand.)

Enter Gil:

To cope, we did a number of things. I started an infertility blog (http://thehardestquest.blogspot.com) that deals solely with our journey…

And one thing I learned: talk about it. I am now a huge proponent of speaking about infertility and its effects on society as a whole. There are a lot of others out there in our shoes and so many are afraid to speak on what the world sees as a semi-taboo subject. Talking about it, sharing our experiences and learning from each other has become one of the best things I’ve found on this journey. It’s gotten me through some hellish times, that’s for sure.

Wishing you and your husband much luck as you sort out things for yourselves. But never be afraid to call on a community to help out. That’s what folks are here for.

I clicked over to her blog and it was like a technicolor Dorothy moment. I began reading along in her journey as she waited for the arrival of Petite, her daughter …who is now nearly 2 years old. I clicked on links and resources all over her blog, finding myself starting to make the connections that would shape my online interactions for the next 2+ years.

Before Gil’s comment, I didn’t really know anything about blogs. I wasn’t reading them and I certainly didn’t consider my LiveJournal a blog by any stretch of the imagination. But it was Gil’s blog that inspired me to start my own and to turn outward in my writing.

My LiveJournal had been so masturbatory and self-indulgent. With Blogger, I didn’t have the intricate circles of privacy settings like I did at LiveJournal: I had to put my whole story out there. And I learned very quickly that there could be community in this format too, just as Gil had mentioned in the closing line of her comment to me.

So after all this time, I am deeply humbled to say: Gil – thank you.

If it wasn’t for your kindness, your comment to my rambling post in the fertilityissues LiveJournal community- if you hadn’t included the link to your blog in that comment…

My blog would never have existed.

Theoretically, neither would anything that’s happened since.

For all I know, I could still be writing away in silence, hidden behind my friend filters and privacy settings on LiveJournal.

Gil, the way you reached out to me speaks so much to what I value about this community – that no matter where we are in our journeys – we’re here for each other. And while we can’t prevent the devastating fact that we are community that grows each day as more people are diagnosed, it makes a world of difference to have just one person welcome you into this unfortunate alliance, to extend their virtual hand and become that first connection.

And so I dedicate this blog move – and my first post of substance in my new home – to Gil.