Esther Brady Crawford - faintstarlite

Lately I’ve been having conversations with a bunch of folks interested in jumping into the social media + blogging fray. Some are personal friends, and others I met through my presentation at Milwaukee’s Job Camp.

The thing about sharing your life + thoughts online is that you have to be ready for the push back. You have to be ready for the accusations that will inevitably come from an anonymous commenter – the person who judges every inane action and proclaims to the world that you’re a bad mother.

I say this because I’ve experienced it many, many times. So I’m here to say it gets easier. But it remains part of the gig.

Blogging has been an incredible outlet and I’m always enthusiastic about seeing new & creative folks join in but one thing I rarely mention is that at times, this whole social media thing can be very painful.

YouTube is a particularly harsh audience and putting my body + weight on display has allowed for an endless stream of comments like “you may have lost the weight, but you’re still fugly”. The drivel of internet troll hate usually makes me laugh – it doesn’t affect my self-esteem, and if anything, it’s given me a chance to fine-tune clever comebacks that showcase their jackassery.

I thought I had developed a thick skin, until baby Jude came along.

Then I realized the worst comments were yet to come, and they would arrive from among my peers… from women, and moms… comments about my parenting. They’d be related to choices like putting my son on the internet, opting not to have him circumcised, trying for a home birth, and taking him to oh-so-dangerous places in the world.

“You’re a bad mother” is what some have said. And I’d be lying if I claimed those words didn’t hurt. They’d finally found my Achilles heel and managed to penetrate through to stab me in the heart.

The good news? I’m learning to let it go. To agree to disagree. To be kinder and less judgmental when I see other moms yelling at their kids in the grocery store because maybe that’s not an accurate or complete picture of her mothering skills.

So this past week when I was at the Mom 2.0 Summit and there was a panel made up of three brilliant women I admire and the topic was self-proclaimed bad mothering – I knew I had to attend.

While they also talked about marketing issues and working with brands, I edited together pieces where they shared their personal journey:

Each day our {incredibly handsome, intelligent + wonderful} lil guy takes a step away from being my itty bitty baby towards being my bigger baby. Cause let’s face it – this kid is stuck being my baby for the rest of his life.

This week two milestones occurred: (1) getting his first tooth… and trust me when I say having your nipple chomped down on by a sharp tooth feels even more painful than it sounds; and (2) trying his hand at crawling up the stairs.

The first I expected, the second I did not.

It’s like he knows this makes our life more difficult.

We no longer have the luxury of looking away for even a split second… because if we do, it’s a mad dash to the staircase to tempt fate and see how far he can climb before the inevitable tumble down to the hardwood floor below.

Since the sheer thought of him falling down terrifies the bejeezus out of me, and we’ve yet to put up a safety gate like good parents do, we’re stuck with being ultra-observant until we get our baby proofing act together.

Watch as he tries to make his way up:

My freshman year of college was the worst year of my life. I was depressed, at times suicidal, and living an isolated existence. It was light years from how I’d envisioned my collegiate experience.

Halfway through the year I quit attending classes altogether.

Suffice it to say I was drained, wallowing in pity with “I’m a failure” stuck on repeat in my head. I had pushed my Dad hard to let me move across the country to attend that school, and with cancer wracking his body I was guilt-ridden and embarrassed to return home.

At the time I chose not to tell my family I’d quit because I knew it’d open a can of questions I wasn’t emotionally prepared to answer yet. So I stayed through the second semester and just sat in my room – most of my daily interactions occurring online.

In the midst of my swirling sadness a simple pop-up via Yahoo! Messenger opened up on my computer screen. A seemingly random question, “Are you from Corvallis?”.

I figured it was another guy looking through local profiles – I was used to these kinds of conversations.

His name was Josh and he shared a bit about his story – he’d just moved from Ohio to Corvallis, Oregon with his cousin; he was bored and looking for new friends in town.

I’d done the same kind of thing when I’d moved from Oregon to Indiana for school. Although I was 2,000 miles away it just so happened that he shared a connection to a town nearby – his cousin had attended a university in Valparaiso, Indiana… a place I’d recently visited. That kept the conversation going long enough for us to add each other as friends, which ensured we’d chat again.

Months later when the bottom dropped out and I moved back to Corvallis we were still in contact. By the end of the summer me, Josh and his cousin Zach were hanging out regularly.

That fall when Josh invited me to check out a Christian ministry on campus with him, I reluctantly accepted… it’d only been a year since I had left the uber-conservative church I’d grown up in and was pretty sure I’d never be a regular anywhere again. I wasn’t even sure I believed in God, let alone Christianity.

On the days I thought I might still believe in Something, all I could really manage to say was that I was mad as hell at It for all I’d been through.

But that first night I attended Something happened, I started to cry. From the depths of my soul I pleaded: For help. For guidance. For some damn relief.

I’d kept my anguish to myself, and it was there, surrounded by a handful of strangers that the tears started to fall. They were friendly, but not pushy, and in their midst I felt a much-needed reprieve from the pain.

So, the next week I went back. And then again. And again.

It didn’t happen overnight, but in time, those people saved my life. They walked with me as I dealt with the feelings I’d tried to bury – anger, depression, hopelessness. We had a ‘come as you are’ – no judgments allowed kind of policy, and that freed me to find myself. Those friends became my family through college, Josh included. And the rest of my college years turned out to be fabulously fun, just like I’d originally envisioned – 80’s parties, winter retreats up in the mountains, and lots of hanging out eating pizza and drinking beer (or in my case, wine – because let’s face it: beer tastes like pee).

Our chance encounter on Yahoo! enabled Josh to bring me into a whole new community.

Without that connection I would never have found my tribe. And without those friends, I wouldn’t be the me I know today.

Footnote: Josh (on left) and his cousin Zach (on right) were ushers in our wedding. Nick was a member of the same campus ministry in Wisconsin, and that common link was what initially brought him to my blog and into my life.

The power of connecting online

For more, check out the original inspiration for this series on people I’ve met online who’ve changed + bettered me.

{Links will be added below as the posts go live.}

Part 1: The Great Depression: How I survived college, with a lot of help from Yahoo! Messenger
Part 2: Internet Dating: Meeting my husband through my blog
Part 3: Finding Business Partners Online: Establishing trust through YouTube
Part 4: Mom Bloggers: Sharing heart + passion with other parents

Nick,

You are the love of my life.

I am honored to be your wife.

When I was a little girl and dreamed of what an amazing Daddy would look like – the kind of man I wanted to marry – I wasn’t sure of all the attributes to include. Funny, sweet, caring, intelligent, handsome.

You’re all of those and more.

So for Valentine’s Day this year I wanted to give you more than the cologne you missed from Christmas. Here’s my gift from the heart:

lyrics of: “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green

And for a stroll down memory lane… I just came across this Valentine to you from 3 years ago:

Our wedding day.

My sister-in-law just started a blog to document her experience as an American student in Prague. Reading her first post gave me a flashback to 2004 when I first started writing here. The initial purpose was to chronicle my travels and keep up with friends while spending a year working on my Arabic at the University of Jordan.

I started out simple. I had no idea that participating in this online community would alter my worldview, change the course of my career, cause me to move to the Midwest… and turn a commenter into my husband.

I got online in 1997 at the age of 14. It was before the parental hysteria had broken out about the potential danger of online predators so I was pretty much given free reign. With a computer in my room I spent most evenings dialed in to chatrooms and instant messengers. I had lots of ‘real life’ friends (who did not get my obsession) but I also bonded deeply with the folks I met online.

But it was more than that.

Those digital relationships shaped me… probably in ways I’ll never fully understand.

My first date was online – like most people remember the name of who they first kissed, I expect I’ll never forget his AOL handle. We dated from 15-17yrs old and only met in person once when I was 18, after we had broken up. We were both early adopters and while most of our peers thought we were weird & geeky for spending so much time on the computer – we got each other, and believed someday the wall between the virtual and concrete would come crashing down.

And we were right.

Now nearly every person I’ve ever met uses email, and most have Facebook accounts.

Even my mom.

So, thanks to my first internet boyfriend I stuck around this place. Made it my home. Even saved up & bought a webcam in ‘99 so we could talk face-to-face… which was less like live streaming and more like taking a series of photos.

Many of the people I’ve met online through the years have provided life-altering interactions. They’ve also become my best friends.

So, in order to honor those people and do the stories justice I’ve decided to turn this into a series of posts. {Links will be added below as the posts go live.}

Addicted to being connected

Part 1: The Great Depression: How I survived college, with a lot of help from Yahoo! Messenger

Part 2: Internet Dating: Meeting my husband through my blog

Part 3: Finding Business Partners Online: Establishing trust through YouTube

Part 4: Mom Bloggers: Sharing heart + passion with other parents

*This post was inspired by SOBCon’s BlogIt EarnIt question for #SOBCon2010