Twenty years ago, I sat down in front of a computer and typed my way out of a grief pit.
I didn’t call it blogging yet. I called it surviving. On February 24, 2006, I launched aboutmyrecovery.com, and the first thing I ever wrote was this: “I chose joy over sadness. It is said that grief is inevitable, but misery is optional.”
I didn’t realize then how far those words would take me.
By that point, I’d already been online for ten years, mostly quietly. Reading forums, following other people’s stories, taking comfort where I could. But I hadn’t told my own story yet. Luijoe had been gone for four years. The grief wasn’t the screaming kind anymore. It had shifted into something quieter, heavier. Like wet sand sitting in your chest. I needed somewhere to put it.
So I started writing.
I wrote about the stockings I still hung for my son. The smell of cinnamon and nutmeg during Christmas baking. The day Butch surprised me by saying he wanted to go to Divisoria to buy ribbons. I wrote about motherhood and grief, and that strange, stubborn act of decorating a Christmas tree even when your heart isn’t in it. I wrote because I wanted other bereaved parents to feel it too: you are not alone.You can survive this.I know because I almost didn’t.
That first post also said: “I realized that it did no good to sit in my misery pit. It did no good for the loss of my son to lead to the loss of two.”
The loss of two. My two surviving daughters. I kept going because of them. Because of Butch. Because somewhere in that fog, I decided that Luijoe’s death would not be the end of our family’s story.
Twenty years changes a person.
From blogger, I became @momblogger. From momblogger, I became an advocate. I found myself speaking up about human rights, about media literacy, about causes I never imagined touching when my world was small and cozy and all I wanted was to be a doting mother. The pain of losing Luijoe gave me a strange kind of courage. It taught me I could survive what I thought would kill me. And if I could survive that, I could face anything.
I remember someone once told me I was too old to be an activist. That I should just “stay home and blog and criticize…just to be popular.”
I became a blogger because of Luijoe, to give hope to mothers who lost a child. I don’t need to be popular. I would rather have Luijoe back than be a blogger.
But here I am. Still here. Still writing.
Five years ago, when I celebrated my 15th blogging anniversary, I added a podcast. “Have Coffee with Me,” I called it, because by then I had also become a budding coffee producer. Life kept surprising me like that. Each chapter layered on top of the grief, not replacing it but growing around it the way a tree grows around a wound in its bark. I have not been consistent in creating podcasts, though.
How am I feeling now, twenty years after that first post? Twenty-four years after the death of my son?
I still miss my beloved Luijoe. When I recall those memories—the wildflowers with a note “I love you so very much, mama,” his little lectures on parenting, his impish smile—I feel the tears rise. They always will. But the sadness no longer steals the joy away. That is the difference twenty years makes. Not that the pain disappears. It doesn’t. But it stops running the show.
I once wrote that love never dies, and the light always shines in our hearts and home. I still believe that. I believe it more now than when I first typed it.. because I have lived it. Through every Christmas angel I hung on our tree, every sugar cookie I baked, every blog post I published at two in the morning, every rally I showed up for, every cup of coffee I served from our farm. All of it, a living tribute to my son.
Someone once asked me what blogging gave me. I had to think about it.
It gave me a voice when I had none. It connected me to people who understood the weight I was carrying. It turned my grief into something useful. And slowly, over twenty years, it gave me back myself. And slowly, over twenty years, it gave me back myself. A different self. One I didn’t plan for, but one I am proud of.
I look back at that first post and I see a woman barely breathing, choosing joy as an act of defiance. I look at who I am today and I see what that defiance built.
Twenty years. It is not perfect, but it is so very different now. And Luijoe is never entirely gone.
