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The World of Mom Blogs By Michelle Eliot
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arilyn Belsham started a blog on a lark. She was a few months into maternity leave with her second child and feeling cut off from the outside world.
motherhood as a shocking, jarring, blissfully transforming experience and would like to reflect deeply on that through writing.”
“Most of my friends were colleagues from work ... With a toddler and a baby, I was feeling kind of trapped. I was spending a lot of time online. So as a joke, sort of, I thought I’m gonna start a blog...Maybe I’ll make a million dollars. I haven’t “
An Ethical Dilemma The amount of personal exposure required of mom bloggers, who are essentially living life as a virtual open book, raises an ethical dilemma for Marilyn Belsham. She’s torn about whether to continue relating stories about her children, 3 and 5 years old, beyond everyday activities like riding bikes and baking cookies. ”I feel super conflicted about this. My son’s in kindergarten now. At some point, a kid becomes his own self, his own identity. I don’t feel entirely comfortable laying out all his problems for anyone to comment on. I don’t know that that’s my right“.
That was three years ago. Belsham’s blog “A Lot of Loves” has evolved into a comprehensive website that includes recipes, gardening tips, product reviews, and tongue-in- cheek musings about life as a parent. She writes about quirky topics like her efforts to stop cursing while around her young children. Her goal is to reflect her belief that most parents don’t really know what they’re doing, but they’re all doing their best. Belsham may not have become a millionaire, but her blog earns some money through advertising. On the often divisive subject of monetizing the mom blog, the former business analyst is pragmatic and unapologetic. “When you’re a stay at home mom, you have a limited number of ways to make money. A lot of us have left our jobs. It’s a really big shock to lose a whole salary. Every little bit helps” Belsham may have started blogging on a whim, but she soon realized she was creating a valuable community of parents around her. “It’s very nice to know you’re not alone. You can read a book, but there’s no feedback there. [On a blog], I can comment, they can comment back. I just found it soothing, more comforting than reading a book on parenting.” That camaraderie is what has sustained her efforts. It’s a feeling that appears to be echoed by other bloggers. Cori Howard, the Vancouver-based editor of Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood, has found many mothers seek social connection through writing about their experience online. Howard teaches writing courses for mothers through The Momoir Project. This month (May), she begins a new class specifically on writing for blogs. Her goal is to teach students how to write a blog that is poignant, powerful and well-read. “All good memoir writing is about deeply reflecting on your particular personal life experience. I think these moms have experienced
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The Momoir Project’s Cori Howard says those concerns are shared by every mother who decides to put her life in writing. For her, the revelatory and confessional aspect of a written piece is what makes it most powerful. “I, as a writer, am giving you, the reader, a gift. I’ve taken the time to unpeel the layers of my emotional experience and share with you something I’ve learned about myself”. But on treading the line between what to share and what to keep private, her advice is if you’re uncomfortable or nervous about repercussions, it’s best not to publish it. After three years, Marilyn Belsham feels her blog is at a turning point. Reaching Out The world of mom blogs is vast and varied. There are those that are dry, witty, and are written with a wink, conceived for the purpose of relieving both writer and reader of the pressure to be the perfect parent. Then there are the blogs that are searing in their emotional intensity, those mothers who reveal so much and write what others cannot bring themselves to articulate. Each is an attempt to reach out, to share, and gain reassurance that this experience we call parenthood, simultaneously so profound and so mundane, has wonderfully and irreversibly changed the life of someone else out there too. Michelle Eliot is a journalist with CBC radio’s On the Coast. She hosts The Parent Project segment Tuesdays at 4:50.