Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
I remember the exact day my Yahoo! mail account started. My 8th grade students gathered around my desk and helped me do it. It was the first glimpse I would have into a future where younger people knew more than me. I had had email accounts before, but they were always attached to my internet provider or my work server and we moved so much and changed jobs enough that I kept losing my accounts.
I was lamenting to my students (mostly military kids) one day how I had a story to share and no way to share it. It was spring and I was between houses and about to leave the job of teaching them. They were pretty adept at mobile life by then so they hooked me up with a Yahoo! account and share my stories I did.
That is what email was for me then, a way to get my word to the masses.
You might say this blog began as a series of emails. I sent my stories and everyone said, “you need to print these somewhere other than email.” I didn’t know what blogs were then, but those messages pushed me to find out.
The first message I sent from that first Yahoo! account was to all my old colleagues who knew me when I was pregnant. It was the story of how smug and judgy I was over the sick child who puked all over the gym daycare. Smug of course until I realized the sick child was my own.
Email served with a small slice of humble pie.
I wrote. They responded.
There were laughs and encouragement and reassurance that I wasn’t a terrible mother. It was those responses that fed me. It was the replies that kept me afloat.
In the days to come, when I was a newly “Homed” SAHM mom, email was my way of not feeling alone in the new world of motherhood. It was my connection to people outside my home. In the past, email had been for business or official news. Once my babies were born and my young students set me straight, email became my life line.
Without that send button, I would have felt cut off and even more alone. But the power of sending my words to the world and seeing their responses allowed me to accept the fact that the road I had taken could still be full of adult interaction. Even if these interactions were a series of messages, that was just fine by me. My words were alive, which meant I still was too.
P.S. Looking for more parenting guidance and tips for self-care? Check out From Chaos to Calm a guided training to help you feel better in this tough season.
I was lamenting to my students (mostly military kids) one day how I had a story to share and no way to share it. It was spring and I was between houses and about to leave the job of teaching them. They were pretty adept at mobile life by then so they hooked me up with a Yahoo! account and share my stories I did.
That is what email was for me then, a way to get my word to the masses.
You might say this blog began as a series of emails. I sent my stories and everyone said, “you need to print these somewhere other than email.” I didn’t know what blogs were then, but those messages pushed me to find out.
The first message I sent from that first Yahoo! account was to all my old colleagues who knew me when I was pregnant. It was the story of how smug and judgy I was over the sick child who puked all over the gym daycare. Smug of course until I realized the sick child was my own.
Email served with a small slice of humble pie.
I wrote. They responded.
There were laughs and encouragement and reassurance that I wasn’t a terrible mother. It was those responses that fed me. It was the replies that kept me afloat.
In the days to come, when I was a newly “Homed” SAHM mom, email was my way of not feeling alone in the new world of motherhood. It was my connection to people outside my home. In the past, email had been for business or official news. Once my babies were born and my young students set me straight, email became my life line.
Without that send button, I would have felt cut off and even more alone. But the power of sending my words to the world and seeing their responses allowed me to accept the fact that the road I had taken could still be full of adult interaction. Even if these interactions were a series of messages, that was just fine by me. My words were alive, which meant I still was too.
