Blogging is Good for a Woman's Health

Raising children with technology is a bane and a blessing. TV, and later Nintendo, were the interlopers in our life as I was raising my children. You have TV, Nintendo, X-box, home PC's and Macs, and all their attendant helps and hindrances. Doing the Tango with technology, and finding a good balance and appropriateness are your big challenges today. Best of luck. It's like dieting; it's not like you can give up food. The way the world is constructed today, you cannot live without technology i.e., the home computer, and what a blessing . . .

So, just why is blogging good for a mother's health? Because it connects you to the world. I remember being so isolated and alone. And speaking "kid-talk" for hours on end. I would drive my husband nuts when he dared to show his face in the kitchen after work. I would talk and talk and talk--I so craved another adult voice, or a simple adult conversation.

He wanted quiet.

But somehow we would both muddle through it. I would find a way to get my needs met, and he would just hang on hoping for the period that never came--only cascading commas, as I let loose all the "big words" I'd saved up for the end of the day, seemed to flow. John Gray calls women Venusians and men Martians, and explains this very phenomenon very well in his book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". (My husband loves that book so much that he gives it out for wedding presents--he has even given out the Spanish version)

So now what can women do about this? Sit down at your computer, click and therapy begins! You can talk with other women, read about other women's difficulties, thoughts, ideas, musings and experiences. And you don't have to leave the house (as if you could sometimes). I marvel at the candor you young women have. You are fearless, you are open, expressing your thoughts candidly through humor, love and yes, even courage. And because of that, the floodgates have been opened. We no longer have to judge "our insides by someone else's outsides". We are all inside now.

When I was a young mom, sadly, when our churches should have been knocking down these walls, they were fortifying them. Unintentionally, you were pitted against perfection, and perfect-seeming people. No one came forth to declare "hey, I did that once" or "my kid did that more times than I can count". No, we hid behind our "can do" personalities, and worked like the devil to appear saintly. I am so glad that times have changed. And if they haven't where you are--they will--or you will just have to go ahead and do it anyway.

There will be thousands of women online ready to cheer you on, to hear you, to teach you, to heal you and show you in many hundreds of tiny ways that you are not alone. We all make mistakes, but as one of my best friends once said, "they have have to do with our growth--not our worth."