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Does blogging empower women? A very short essay.
By ella | June 14, 2007
My youngest son is now a glorious seventeen months old. It’s a good age, seventeen months: old enough to make your feelings known, young enough to elicit a hug simply by looking up, eyes brimming with unshed tears, old enough to bait your brothers, young enough to have a mother’s unquestioning protection from them.
The last seventeen months have been a slog but I have - in some sort of masochistic way - enjoyed them. In the last month or two life has become easier, taken on a slower, less stressful pace. The baby (no longer a baby but always my baby) sleeps, eats, guided by days which have a gentle routine. I know his every expression and can anticipate almost every emotion that any one particular action will precipitate in his little body. I feel like a competent mother. And I am happy - sometimes startlingly so.
It wasn’t always like that. When my middle son, William, was seventeen months old I started this blog. For the first seventeen months of his life and for several months after that I was severely, desperately, unknowingly depressed. When I stumbled across the blogging world my world was absolutely, unutterably transformed. After a while I wrote:
writing this blog has helped me overcome some really dreadful times, given me a sense of purpose, given me a view beyond my little baby-driven world, allowed me to find other like-minded people and given me hours of fun reading some of the truly witty, poignant and clever blogs. ….. Part of the reason I suffered from postpartum depression is that I felt like I didn’t measure up to the stereotypes put forward in the media, I didn’t measure up to the parenting manuals, I didn’t measure up to how I thought every other mum was coping (nobody talks about depression, not really), I didn’t feel I had anything other to focus on than babies and I didn’t have anything other to focus on than my babies and how I wasn’t coping with them. Reading other people’s real experiences - not some biased media account, nor some parenting manual scenario - and hearing from other people in similar circumstances has helped me beyond measure.
Blogging is extraordinary: it has created networks of people with shared experiences, it allows us to make connections with others, it gives us an outlet where we can express ourselves without fear of judgement. Women, and mothers in particular, are a critical part of the blogging world, proof that the medium of blogging works so well in creating networks to share information and experiences and to support and empower each other, and in creating virtual villages in which we raise our children.
The blogging world, like life, is full of niches: politics, religion, opinions, everyday events, hobbies, hacks. No one area is any ‘better’ or any more important than another and to dismiss ‘mommyblogging’ as trivial is inaccurate. Mothers need each other and blogging is not only a logical extension of that desire to connect and to support one another, but a way of deconstructing the myths of motherhood and, in doing so, empowering all of us who take part in it.
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Categories: Mommyblogging, Meta-blogging
I’m not a blogger but I can see how this kind of network benefits mothers. I suppose it’s the same reason I enjoy reading your site, to know that I am not the only one experiencing depression or being plagued by mastitis or having a day where I can’t stand my children!
I don’t blog either but I enjoy reading them. I also like chat boards but blogs reveal more of a person’s personality so you get the information but it’s more interesting to read.
I’ve been blogging for almost 3 years and I must say that I love to have a place where I can dump any feeling - good and bad. It allows me to validate my ideas and feelings, like Eva said above. I find that I am not the only one to feel a certain way and right there, you find that you are really ok.
I’m so glad that you are feeling lifted. I know that blogging has linked me to people like you and for that reason, it has been a blessing.
This is just so beautifully said.