(In case you missed it during my guest blogging last week, here’s a post on blogging identity.)

I am, I suppose, a “Mommy Blogger.” When I started my blog last fall, my first post was entitled, simply enough, “Mommy Blogging!” After sporadically writing a book blog for a few months, I had realized that book reviews were a bit too limiting and I decided to jump right in to the mommy blogging frenzy.

In the beginning, I focused on fitting in to the genre of Mommy Blogging. I wrote about tips for traveling with a baby, first birthday parties, things I learned to do one-handed after having a baby, and playgroups. But even then I knew I wasn’t a crafts and recipes and “Life is awesome!” kind of blogger. I wrote about the fact that Baby Einstein videos are bad for babies, about the way that I worry about Adeline seeing NFL cheerleaders and learning negative gender stereotypes, and my longing for a place to call home. This was all within the first month.

As I wrote and wrote and struggled to find my voice, I found myself posting fewer “Mommy” posts and more “Mother” posts. I wrote less about the funny moments that come along with having a baby, and more about the frustrating, exhausting, boring, heart-breaking, depressing, isolating, and amazing moments that come along with having a baby. I worried that if I shared my true experience of motherhood I wouldn’t have very many readers. But instead, I gained more readers, and more comments, the more honest I was.

And then a funny thing happened. Continue reading »