Why the long blog silence?

I have loved blogging as a form of an online journal. It's been a great way for me to document my life and especially my children's lives. However, as is obvious, it is also very public. Anybody can read almost any blog at any time. Because of that factor, there have been long silences on my blog in the past as life kicks my butt in one form or another. This was never more true than the past year of my life.

Sometimes life dishes us trials and events that shake us to the core, that are so very private and all consuming, taking over aspect of our lives. That was what happened to me in the fall of 2009 and lasting into the summer of 2010. My little family was rocked and shaken in the most extreme ways. For almost a year, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. Every time I thought my little family had reached rock bottom, I found out we had only been standing on a ledge that quickly crumbled beneath us, plummeting us even further into a dark abyss. I have never experienced a year as hard and as trying as this one before. Because of the deeply personal aspects of what my family experienced, I haven't shared the trials we went through with many people. Outside of a few trusted friends, nobody, not even our immediate or extended family, knew what we were experiencing. Because of the deeply personal aspects, I will not be sharing many of the trials here either. But the past year explain my absence from blogging for so long.

I'm the kind of person that goes into self preservation mode when faced with hard times and challenges. I can only focus on the tasks that take my immediate attention and energy. Last year that meant that everything, other than my job and my family, went by the wayside. I hunkered down and did my best to ride out the storm. I let a lot of personal interests go as I focused on what was most important.

Now that life has slowed down (as slow as it gets around here anyway!) and I am not in self preservation mode as much, I can return to blogging. I have felt the need, more than ever, to chronicle the lives of my family and myself. I use this as a sort of journal. I love to share the funny things my kids says, pictures of them, and the daily occurrences of our lives. I am excited to return to something I once loved so much!