The other night I was skimming through old posts and getting a warm and fuzzy feeling, saying hi to past versions of myself preserved as emotional snapshots. I also noticed that my blog has evolved in surprising (to me) ways. When I started this blog, my mission was to uplift and encourage other single ladies (I was 24 at the time), to help keep others from falling into negativity and despondence. Now that I’ve been around the block a few more times (around and around and around the block), I have more humility when I write, and my tone has changed. I’m less of a…sage? shall we say. I’m in the pain. I’ve been to that place where everything looks black and nothing makes a dent in my despair. I’ve been heartbroken, I’ve been burnt out, I’ve been embarrassed, I’ve been devastated.
You know how they say that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing? When I started this blog, I only had a little bit of knowledge about the depths of emotion and pain one can experience in shidduchim. I knew what I knew given my experiences, but now I’ve seen and felt so much more. And now I recognize how much more there must be that I don’t understand about other people’s experiences. So my mission is different, or maybe, has faded. I write because writing is a life raft for me, and I hope if you need one yourself, you can climb aboard. I write to raise my voice and hear it in the best way I know how. I write to see my experience reflected back to me, to understand, clarify, and sharpen my thinking. I write to play with and to document ideas, to bank them for a time when I need wisdom I can’t access. I write because I love to write, and not to change anyone but me.
