Blogging, part III

I was just reading Ari Herzog's blog and clicked on a link at the end of his most recent post (as of this writing, anyway). The link I clicked on was "blogger in a post-literate society," which led me to all kinds of pieces speculating about blogging and whether it is journalism and so on.

But what I got most out of it all (aside from the fact that I never have considered myself a "journalist" and Bob Gould and I talked about that when I met him; he did not, either), was the privacy angle and ones personal life being out there, for all to see.

I've had a couple of people now question why I put something so personal as the post about my uncle on my blog. I replied to the last person, "If it helped just one person, it was worth it."

Not that it is/was any skin off my nose, at the time. I told my mother about my experience, and because it stopped, I assumed that something was said. But in the long run, it didn't stop because no one wanted to openly talk about it, myself included. But I was just a kid.

And then, the other day, I felt I had to write the 'apologetic' post as a followup. I felt worse about that post than about the original post, although I'm not sorry I recounted the good things I remembered about my uncle.

My younger siblings did not experience any of those things, although my sisters did inherit the Barbie sports car. (Because I am the product of my mother's first marriage, my next sibling is 9 years younger than I. My mother remarried when I was 7 years old.)

I could have written the post as a third-person account, I suppose, but I always think first-person accounts have more impact.

So .... Why is everything such a secret?

I remember when my youngest sister had her first child, she felt like she was a failure as a mother because it was a struggle to get my niece to breast feed at first.

As it turned out, this is a common problem. Babies have to be 'trained' to breast feed. Where was this ever portrayed on TV/movies, or written about in books preparing one to be a first-time mother? My sister is not an uninformed person, she reads a lot, but yet, she did not know this.

Neither did a friend of mine, who more recently went through the same thing after she had her first child. I told her about my sister having the same 'problem,' and my friend felt better about herself (and the child).

And it is an embarrassment, to say the least, to a mother to think that she, and she alone, is incapable of completing a task that is widely considered to be automatic.

It was on an Internet forum that I read a complete list of the signs of pre-menopause, beyond hot flashes and irritability. I had thought I was dying (which, by the way, was in the past the impetus for numerous women actually killing themselves). This was after I purchased 3 books on the subject, none of which were the least informative and were pushing hormone replacement meds.

Someone else recently asked me, "Why don't you write about menopause?"

Good question. Back at my last place of employment (not the Current), I said to a young, male co-worker who had just got engaged, "Please don't hate or resent Sarah when she gets to menopause." That wasn't my experience, but I know it's the experience of other women. (He looked at me like I was nuts, by the way.)

So yeah, if there are people out here in the blogosphere who are writing stuff who can help with even the seemingly smallest of issues that no one seems inclined to talk about, then I say more power to us all.

Knowledge is power; sharing is good.