My serious blogging began on the day my husband died. Sounds weird but it was actually the cataclysmic event which gave me reason….although at the time it was a survival mechanism. If you’re confused as to how one could go from grieving widow to being a blogger….read on. 🙂

I had always liked to journal my holidays. Back when Mark Zuckerberg was still in school and hadn’t even thought of Facebook, I would set up a basic blog before I left to go away on a trip so that my family and friends could ‘come along with me’. Here’s an example of one of those primitive blogs (our trip to Germany and Scandinavia) that has been sitting up in the cloud since 2008!

These early blogs were just created for the sole purpose of documenting a holiday though, and they stopped the moment I got home. It had no real similarity to the concept of ‘being a blogger’.

Then one day I opened the door to the Police, who informed me that my husband had died in a tragic accident….and my world turned upside down.

Read: The Day My Heart Broke

As a type A personality, I have a monkey mind at the best of times but during those early days of intense emotional distress I couldn’t get it to switch off at all, and thoughts swarmed around my tired brain and kept me awake through the wee small hours. For my mental health I needed to get some of these thoughts out of my head and written down in a form that would make sense to me and prevent the same stuff going around and around inside my exhausted mind.

That’s basically how this all began. My first posts were on Facebook because it was familiar to me, and because I knew that only family and friends were going to read my ramblings. I basically poured out my heart and my thoughts in posts.

As time crept by I began to try and understand the journey of grief that I was being forced to travel, and so the research began. I watched numerous YouTube videos, Ted Talks, read medical reports and other people’s accounts and stories.

I needed to understand, and I needed to share my feelings, opinions and ideas. As the Facebook posts became less an outpouring of grief and more of a sharing of new understanding, I had many of my friends and family say “You should write a book!”

I received emails and phone calls where some of my Facebook readers had used the suggestions to support people they knew who were grieving… which empowered them to be able to ‘do something useful.’ One friend rang to say that after reading my missives, he now understood why he lost a good friend….because he didn’t give this friend what he needed after his wife died. I was being encouraged to share what I was researching, thinking and saying with a wider audience.

And so the idea was born. In that first year I was just trying to survive and cope so it took a while for it to come to fruition, but then…15 months after that awful day…..I accidentally came across a site which assists people to get started with a blog and I thought “This is it! I need to do this!”

The website was a blog called “It’s a Lovely Life” by Heather and Peter Reese. They are seasoned bloggers and like to help others get started. I need to point out that I’m not getting any financial incentives for promoting their stuff, but I have found it personally helpful so worth sharing.

I first joined their free 5 day email course which flooded me with ideas and enthusiasm. From there I decided to throw myself into this new project and give it all I had. My original aim was to continue what I started on Facebook, and reach out to help others who are coping with their own journey of grief…whether that was their own or if they were supporting somebody else.

It grew from there as coping with grief is only the beginning. My new aim is to document the whole healing process, especially the development of new interests and directions in what has become a new life for me. In this category I’ll be sharing with you all the ups and downs of becoming a blogger.

How about the time I ‘broke’ my whole website! Oh, and that momentous event of having it ‘go live’ for the first time. Scary! 🙂 I’m not a super-technical person but I’ll be sharing what has helped me a lot along the way, and the links and websites and Facebook pages that I have found particularly useful.

Read:
Who Am I? 5 Ways Toward Finding the New Me

So this is the beginning of one of my new identities. I’m a blogger. Woohoo! 🙂

Why don’t you subscribe and come along for the ride? It might be bumpy at times, but I’m sure we’ll have fun. 🙂

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Marlene is an Australian widow who has written about all the good, bad and ugly stuff that happened after her husband Norbert died tragically. Marlene responds to all comments.