The Beginnings of a Blog

So how exactly did this all happen?

And more importantly, why on earth would I write about this on the web to share with millions of strangers?

{March 30, 2009.}

These were the first two sentences I wrote on my blog, nearly 3 years ago, in a post titled “More Than You Ever Needed to Know About Me.” It’s funny. They’re valid questions, one that many infertility bloggers face.

Why would we put all of this information out in such detail, out there for the world to see?

. . .

When I started this blog in 2009, blogging was such a foreign concept to me even though I’d been LiveJournaling for years. While I kept this blog anonymous for a year, there were plenty of friends and family who read my blog in the early days. But in the wake of learning at age 26 that my eggs were virtually dust, I felt compelled to write.

And write I have.

But today, I want to take a look back at the blog post that started it all.

In the Beginning

My very first post on this blog has no comments. I’m sure it’s due to the total lack of dedicated readership at that point and perhaps because of its content. I spend a little over 1200 words giving readers the oh-so-detailed story of my reproductive system from my first period to my infertility diagnosis:

But my whole story starts well before last September; in fact, it begins on May 21, 1992. I am 9 years old, and it is 4 days before my 10th birthday. It’s a Saturday (yes, I still remember this) and I got my first period.

I began my blog just a couple of weeks after I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and for me, I was still very much in the mindset of “how did this happen?” so that tracing my entire reproductive history was an important first step in establishing just how the hell my lady bits got so fakakta.

Even then, just twelve days after being told that no, you can’t have children, I felt compelled to share my story:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the short time since my diagnosis, it’s that hearing other women’s stories, other voices, is so comforting, supportive, and helpful. My hope is that my story might help other women, other couples struggling with infertility and their family and friends.

It’s funny to me now to go back and reread my first blog post, only to see how this believe – only my third paragraph in to my blog – has become central to not only who I am, but to the work that I seek to do in this world.

It’s this guiding belief – that our infertility stories matter – that has led me to create The Infertility Voice.

Coming Full Circle

It’s been almost three years since I began this blog and a lot has happened in my life. We bought a house, we lost jobs, we quit jobs, we got new jobs, we traveled, we lost family members, we gained family members – not necessarily in that order. But it’s been an incredibly busy three years for Team Zoll. And we were worried there for a little while, in the early days of 2009 after I was diagnosed as infertile and a week later, my husband got laid off from his job.

With each word, I’ve written myself closer and closer to the future I want to make for myself. That’s the incredible power of writing; I said this to a friend on Twitter yesterday:

Writing brings you one step closer, word by word, to whatever your imagination wants to create.

For me, the future I’d love to see – and help create – is one where infertility is free from shame, stigma, and cultural silencing. It’s unfortunate that I have to have infertility in the first place, but it’s this confluence of diagnosis and self-discovery that’s put me on this path.

It’s a path that exists because of this blog, and by extension – because of every single person who reads and comments here.

All Good Things…

Everything has to end at some point, right? There are few infinite things in our Universe and I knew full well that my blog would not be one of them.

So even after all my lovely redesigning and the arduous move from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress this summer, it’s coming time to close up shop around here.

On March 5, 2012, Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed will close.*

What’s Next for My Blog

All of my blogging will be done over at my new digs, The Infertility Voice. So, update your readers now (new RSS feed here) and make sure you go like the new Facebook page (because yes, that’s moving too).

And while you’re waiting for The Infertility Voice to launch on March 5, you sign up for nifty email updates here. I’ve sent out 2 already and they’ve had special goodies for early adopters.

I know change sucks. We all hate change. But it’s for the better – I promise! And my blog at The Infertility Voice is just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said – those email updates? Sign up for ’em so you can get all the sneaky peeks before I go live on March 5th.

*It won’t necessarily disappear from the internet. I’ll have the domain forward from HannahWeptSarahLaughed.com to TheInfertilityVoice.com; also, I’m migrating all of my posts from here to the new place, so you can still find all of my content from the past 3 years.

It’s amazing to look back on that very first post and realize that ultimately, it’s guided me to where I am today:

“…why on earth would I write about this on the web to share with millions of strangers?”

Answer: Because infertility stories matter.

And so does yours.

Because we need to tell those stories, advocate for awareness and facilitate a culture of compassion.

I hope you’ll join me in this work at The Infertility Voice.

---

This post is part of the Time Warp Tuesday Blog Hop hosted by Kathy at Four of a Kind. Swing by her blog today to see who else is participating and join in the fun for next Tuesday.