Why a Blog?

Friday, August 9, 2024

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Well, not the actual beginning. How about the beginning of the reason why this blog is here? .

I was in the midst of my weekly zoom therapy session, sharing some insight I’d gained that week with excitement.

“See, this is the exact type of thing I want to write in my book!” I was saying.

“Yeah, you’ve been talking about writing that book for a long time,” she answered.
Her point being that it was time to put written words where my mouth was… or to put typed words up on a website somewhere. It was time to start writing. Point taken.

And I have been talking about writing a book for a long time. For one thing, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid. I’ve kept journals for as long as I’ve known how to write. And I’ve kept every journal I’ve ever written… except for a few. That’s another post altogether. We can come back to that later…

Not only do I love to write, but I’ve got a story to tell. I’ve been through some stuff. Actually, scratch that. I have it on the authority of several mental health professionals that I have been through A LOT of significantly traumatic events in my life.

Those events were the reason why, several years ago, in April of 2021, I had a breakdown, and decided to find a new therapist. I say a new therapist because I’d seen several talk therapists in years prior, but it had never had a significantly helpful impact on my permanent well-being. When it came to therapy, I was firmly in the ‘been-there-done-that-didn’t-help’ camp.

When it came to this breakdown though, I had no choice. Something had to be done about what I was struggling with. Married for 9 years, full-time stay-at-home mom, three kids ages 7 and under. Recently relocated from northern California after my husband had been unjustly let go from his previous job of three years as an associate pastor. We were now in northern Illinois, where he’d been hired to be the director of a school of ministry at a multi-campus church. New state, new home, no friends, no family. It had been about four months since we’d moved, and I had not been getting enough sleep, or practicing self-care. I’d already been on anti-anxiety medication to manage my panic attacks, but they started coming back. I was becoming consistently triggered when it came to the expectation of ‘intimacy’. I’d been struggling with this while trying not to show that I was struggling because I’d seen in the past it had been met with frustration, rather than concern and support.

However, I could no longer pretend and fake it to make it through, or do my best to cry as silently as I possibly could in the bathroom afterward, wanting to peel my own skin off, wanting to die, because of the way that this ‘intimacy’ made me feel.

Finally, it came to a moment where I had to say no, I had to say that I couldn’t continue like this. I needed a break from the expectation of ‘intimacy’ in our relationship because of how seriously and negatively it was affecting me. This was met with surprise, frustration, and anger, and I was told that I had to find a counselor, and if I didn’t find one for myself, he would find one for me.

At that point, I did fully believe that the problem was within me. Because of my past relationships, because of having gone through my parent’s divorce, because of my genetic predisposition to depression and anxiety. Also because, on paper, there was no reason I could pinpoint that would explain why I didn’t feel perfectly safe and happy to engage intimately with my husband. The problem could only be me.

So, I started my search, contacted an office, arranged my health insurance, convinced my husband to be ok with giving up his day off from work, which was on fridays, to watch the kids, and to let me drive our second car the hour and a half to the office of the therapist I’d chosen. All of this took about a month and a half, so on the first Friday in June, 2021, I started therapy, again.

Three years later, now divorced, in my own apartment, holding down my own full-time job, during my weekly meeting with the therapist I’d been paired with while at that office, I was reminded, yet again, of how far I’d come, and of how long I’d been talking about wanting to share my journey with the world, in the form of a memoir.

That conversation was three (or four? (or five??)) months ago. Starting a website is not easy. I’ve been procrastinating from the task of actually writing with such inconsequential minutia as finding web hosting, choosing a WordPress theme, cursing whoever it was that set up the WonderBlocks interface, thinking they were doing web design newbies like myself any favors. (ditching Wordpress all together and taking the whole operation to squarespace instead!)

However, I am starting with a blog, rather than a manuscript saved in a Word doc on my laptop for a few reasons:

1. Imperfect Action
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, tells the story of a photography professor who told half of his class they only had to submit one perfect photograph to pass the class. The other half would have to submit regular assignments as usual. The Perfect Photograph half ended up with one lackluster attempt a piece, while the regular assignment half made much more progress toward a perfect photo. The moral of the story is this: practice, trial and error, action, even imperfect action (especially imperfect action) gets you farther than no action. Simply doing something, good and bad, is more helpful than doing nothing. This blog is my imperfect action toward the goal of compiling a book about my life.

2. Finally telling my story
This blog allows my experiences, stories, anecdotes, and life lessons to become concrete, real, visible, and transferable to others via the World Wide Web. I can get these thoughts and words out into the world, where they can find those who need these stories, and be helped by them.

So, until next time,

– Xenia