Blogging as Therapy

I have kept a diary since I was a little girl.

One of my crushing moments was when my older brother found it and read it aloud to his friends. We were all kids. I was furious then.

Now I smile at the memory. How I wish I still had those diaries with their locks and keys and childhood scribbling!

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http://www.pexels.com     Notice all the crumbled notes…so true!

A Blogger is Born

I started this blog in August 2015 because of my older son.

He kept telling me that it would be a good thing for me to do.

After all, I was writing anyhow so why not take that writing and share it with an audience?

I don’t do everything my sons tell me to do but this time I did.

Benefits of Blogging

This is what blogging has done for me.

It has made me organize my thoughts and express them on paper.

It has made me more observant of the world around me. I now carry my “field notes” with me most places. I jot down ideas, quotes, and interesting tidbits.

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Handy & convenient for capturing that fleeting thought!

It has taught me to think through the eyes of others as I read other blogs and read the comments to my blog.

It introduced me to a wonderful community of caring, wise and articulate writers around the world.

I admit that I was nervous because of what I had heard about trolls hounding people.

I did not want to be harassed. I did not want to feel unsafe or intimidated by other bloggers.

Instead, I found just the opposite. I was not hounded. I was not ridiculed. Instead, bloggers have been very supportive.

It has been fun. I do it because I like to connect with others. It calms my brain which is teeming with ideas, thoughts and reactions. I have learned so much. Thank goodness for the Internet as it allows me to “google” something I read on a post.

A Memoir

There is nothing I love better than to spend time with my sons.

We have a shared history. We have a shorthand that allows us to convey emotions just with a word or a look.

Yet, I have moved on from the woman they experienced growing up.

My life has not gone according to plan. Too, there is a significant part of my life that occurred before their births.

Even though motherhood is one of my treasured badges of life, it is not the only one. I want them to know me as a person.

In a Nutshell

Most of all, I blog for me.

I find it  therapeutic and helpful to share my life, my observations and my concerns with a responsive audience.

I thank you and I ask you to share, if you wish, why you blog.

35 thoughts on “Blogging as Therapy”

  3. I love writing and expressing my emotions too..
    When I was younger I had kept a dairy Too… and I also I I didn’t lose them.. they would have been a wonderful story today…
    Keep on writing.. we love to travel your journey with you..
    It’s really a therapy…

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    1. Hi, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think you hit the nail on the head that we are all on a journey. It is nice to have fellow travelers to share the road.

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    1. Hi, Isn’t it wonderful that we can write and talk about all kinds of things and find an audience which will support us, challenge us and make us think? Thank you for commenting on this post.

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  5. Excellent, I hold your same opinion.
    The reason I started blogging, I got so many thought and plans running on my mind, that I was finding it difficult to control. I was forgetting it.
    Now I love it, I was lately thinking to write a dairy like you mentioned.
    But I still prefer technology in that case, although I know and experience that it make a mockery of me.
    I use a lot of utility apps, to organise myself. Like I use Samsung Note 4, It has an excellent S Notes app. Whenever I need to pen down anything. I just take my pen and write on it.
    I blog for myself, random thoughts and life in general. How to make more out of self.
    Since I do many different things, I try to keep up with things.
    And I love the whole blogging community a lot.
    It’s so nice meeting people like you.

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    1. Hi, Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your blogging approach. It is nice to find a kindred spirit. I also use technology to write drafts, take pictures, etc. I find it to be wonderful. I am glad that you came to my site. Very nice to meet you!

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  6. Absolutely agree. Our blog has been about transcribing our past diaries. So it is more for us and not to gather followers or likes. We hope through blogging to be engaged with people from around the world. We all have stories to tell and experiences to share!

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    1. What stories you have to share from your fantastic travels. I love that you are committed to travel and make it happen. Good for you. Your “two cents worth” in the world of travel is very valuable. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Happy travels to both of you.

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  7. Lori yours is one of my favourite blogs, mostly because you don’t waffle like I do. And because you really speak truthfully from your heart. Whatever your chosen topic. I am challenged daily to use less words that I want to. I sometimes feel bad that I am too long winded and people’s attention will/ do stray. My teenage diary was found by an older sister who read it then teased me unkindly. I have never kept a personal diary since – only a “farm diary” to use as reference. I began blogging because somebody I know kept encouraging me to write and, one day, when it was Freedom Day in my country, the urge to write woke up. I love remembering and I love sharing and I love speaking to the imagination of other people. But I have very few followers so, unlike you, I don’t really have anybody communicating back.

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    1. Hello, I really appreciate your comments. Thank you for sharing them. I find your posts to be wonderful. Blogging can be time consuming. Many of us who blog are either retired or in a more relaxed stage of life. Enjoy blogging for yourself. When you find an extra moment, read other blogs, comment and follow them. I think it is better to have solid connections so that you can get to know each other. I am so glad that we connected. Your world sounds so exotic and fascinating!

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  9. I started blogging (well, micro-blogging on Facebook) to get the many pictures of Choppy off of my main page and get them only to the people who wanted to see them. I had no idea I would eventually have a regular blog or that I would enjoy it so much!

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  10. You are so right when you penned down all the benefits of blogging. I too have started blogging recently and, not all but some of the things you mentioned are happening with me too.
    My thoughts are all falling in line now and I have started observing people, things, behaviours and every admirable experience happening around me.
    Lovely post. Hope you keep on blogging in future and wish you all the best.

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  11. I had many of the same initial concerns about blogging and putting my life out there in public, but it’s our choice what we want to share, and often I’ve found that it’s a great way to connect with people all over the world. It enriches our lives to hear how other people live and what they think and do and feel. I’m very happy to have found the blogging community.

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  12. It is therapy! I have been blogging in earnest one year and over time I’ve improved at expressing. I have come to really love the challenge of trying to write well! I agree most bloggers even when they disagree are kind. Twitter not so much.

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  13. Interesting reading! I started blogging because, well, my sister made me do it! She set up the blog for me and told me to ‘go and make a card and then write something’. So I did! It is a fantastic way to connect with so many different people though.

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  15. You captured the blogging experience for so many of us. It’s a community of like-spirits and while it is true that it has taught me to be more observant of the world around me, I really liked your point about it teaching you “to think through the eyes of others as I read other blogs and read the comments to my blog”. It’s a great observation and one I haven’t seen articulated before now.

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  18. I share much of what you write. Blogging is an outlet and if others enjoy it, so be it, but what we write should be for us. Some days there’s nothing to say and others the cup runneth over.

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  19. I had a diary as a little girl. It was private and also had a lock and key. I have a private website that I give access to a few. It is not to be streamed to facebook or such. This is very spiritual in nature. I began my blog site because I wanted to ‘connect’ with many. It is therapeutic. I find with bloggers I can expose as much of myself as I wish. My heart can soar to comment or be blessed or encouraged. I can ‘freely’ connect with others on the way and find their amazing and ‘different’ journeys and lifestyles and on my own blog I can be exactly what I called it passionate Creative Christian. The amazing people I have chosen to ‘follow’ constantly keep my own life energised. My writing life – books, poetry, meditation books etc etc are all a part of who I am but the blogging journey remains important, therapeutic and valued. Thank you Lori. (everything you have written and will write is valued ++)

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  20. Like you, I used to keep a diary and then life got in the way! I love blogging as a creative outlet & to do something for me. As my blog focuses on France, it has also enabled me to link up with other bloggers who share my passion. I love the sense of community amongst like minded bloggers & that it enables me to connect with people world wide.Blogging rocks!!

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  21. This is my second time around blogging. Life changes over time and i found i needed blogging more in some moments than others and needed to have a break for a while.
    I agree it can be a very therapeutic thing and also it can offer a pretty safe place (compared to other parts of the internet) for like minded (or differently oriented 😉 ) people to communicate openly and have more in-depth connections with than either facebook or twitter allow for.
    It can also be a way for me to organise my random thoughts a little and i enjoy the potential to share my ideas and findings with others in the hope they may be of interest or may offer a new view of something in their lives as i get from their blogs.
    It gives me a sense of community in a world where this can sometimes be a difficult thing to achieve in one’s own neighbourhood.
    Thanks for your blog and post Lori. 🙂
    love.

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  25. I really think that blogging can be a therapy method for everyone. Though it could also be a place for bullying (because a lot of time people don’t pay responsibility to their responses). Nevertheless, I always can find positive vibe through writing my blog and reading other’s. In this sense, blogging is self-affirming and self-recovering 🙂

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