What We Believe: Blogging Community as a Healing Force (Live Blog)

(I live blogged a session as a favor. Hence the randomness of this post. But you really aren’t missing much as the theme of this site is about to turn into what I would say if I had a voice. It wouldn’t be pretty)

What We Believe: Blogging Community as Healing Force

Moderater: Susan Wagner Panelists: Flutter, Lovebabz, WhyMommy, Laurie Kingston

When I was asked to liveblog this session I said yes without having a clue as to who the panelists were or the meat of the topic. I said yes and in 15 minutes found myself in a room full of women passing out kleenex and thanking the makeup Gods for waterproof mascara. On the one hand I felt duped because nothing can bring one down like mothers with cancer or rape but in the end I found myself pleasantly surprised that these women were able to use their writing for good. There are so many stories about sites dedicated to hating another blogger or posts being written about how another is wrong in their personal life choices and because of a few bad apples, we often forget about those who have not only helped themselves but also others, with their words.

Flutter’s site had been a knitting blog had been using talk therapy to overcome a sexual assault that had happened at 13. She instead wanted a legible history of where/who she was now and where she was coming from as the events of her past had affected her present.

Lovebabz was awaiting sentencing for a white collar crime. At the same time her husband left her with four children and she was facing foreclosure. She started blogging to get it all out. She didn’t want to be all about whining but about how she chooses to live and love even in the face of all of this adversity. She continues to keep a good spin on things.

Laurie Kingston and Susan (aka WhyMommy) are both mothers living with cancer. Laurie was not a blogger before it all started but used blogging as a tool to explain her feelings as she was fighting this disease. She now has a book coming out. Susan was a ‘typical mommyblogger’ who was diagnosed with cancer right before she was supposed to attend the BlogHer conference last year. When she made her announcement thousands of other bloggers rallied around her after a fellow mommyblogger wrote a post about her cancer and then posted a blog badge to go along with it. Other bloggers read this post and added the badges to their site. People continue to add them each day and each time Susan is touched and helped in a way that couldn’t have been done without this community.

These women have done what they have and have been successful at it in that they have healed and found the good in themselves and each other. They all believe that we – as people – are all connected and that by using their words they are concsious of what they and others say and use writing to provoke thought and are ‘arbiters of careful speech’. They have all found that they can go to their individual blogs and write exactly how they feel at that moment. Whether it be 4 PM or 4 AM. It is agreed that there is a “community of people who want to be there for you…[but are] safe behind a computer screen”.

Susan says that blogging helps her to rely on people who aren’t there all the time in order give her partner or those close some space. I sit back and recall all of the times, especially as of late where I’ve just written something instead of regurgitating the same stories and issues to friends of mine. It isn’t that anyones friends or family are uncaring it’s just that it’s hard for them to have to deal with issues no matter how great, and have these issues piled upon them one after another.

Babz has found – and at times I couldn’t agree with this more – that people in the virtual world tend to be more forgiving.

Other points: There is a sense of community that you don’t get in face to face interactions because so often we put up a wall in public. It’s easier to pour your heart out online. (Both of which are so true that I found myself nodding right along)

Babz says: There are no perfect people. “I have to be my own superhero. I have to be the one that I love” and has used blogging to find that force within her.

An audience member asks: “How was the community of your blog helpful in getting you through…?”

The panel: Bloggers bringing healing to other people with what they’ve shared – by what you’re sharing you’re giving out as much as you have received from others in the community. Laurie and Susan agree with the helping yourself by helping others sentiment and through that they have harnessed another community called Mothers with Cancer which is a group blog by women and for women who have had or are currently living with cancer.

The conversation then moves to the use of other forms of blogging and community such as microblogging using Twitter. Susan says that she used twitter to let people know right when she was about to go under for her surgery and then when she came out from under anesthesia. She then asks the audience if there are other communities with the same healing force and while it seems that there might be one for victims of sexual abuse (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) it seems that the communities that these women have built for themselves have had a power like no other.

I should point out that while this session was going on the Naked Blogging session in which several good friends of mine (Tracey, Loralee) had to share painful stories of trolling and meanness that they have encountered via their blogs. And while this session may have been depressing as hell (mothers with cancer and crying, people. CRYING) it was still nice to bear witness to extreme kindness and thought that we often forget about in the blogher-sphere.