A Letter to My Blog On Its 7th Birthday

Note: Last week I celebrated the 7-year anniversary of my blog. I had planned to cull the lessons I’ve learned over the years and share them in a blog post. Instead, I decided to recognize the moment by writing a letter to my blog, the way I might write a letter to a child, if I had one.

Letter-writing as a form of journaling is one of my favorite creative tools. It tends to access the heart space more, and thus allows access to a deeper wisdom than the mind can access.

I decided to share the letter with you; a behind-the-scenes of a creative tool in my practice. I’d love to hear what resonates with you.

A Letter to My Blog On Its 7th Birthday

Dear My Meadow Report,

7 years ago, I birthed you into the world. It was a big moment for me, the culmination of a 7-year pregnancy during which I incubated the dream seed of you in my womb.

I used to speak and dream of the idea of you often, imagining what we could do together and the impact we could make.

But I didn’t know how to bring you into this world.

The obstacles seemed too numerous.

I was confused and overwhelmed by all the decisions I needed to make to bring you into the world. Decisions that at once seemed both tiny and huge.

What blogging platform would be your home? WordPress, Typepad, or Blogger? What hosting platform would provide your foundation?

What would you be about?

I felt constrained by the expectation to choose a niche, to define what you would become before you even came into this world.

What was the right look for you?

What theme would be perfect and make you shine? What colors and fonts would show the world how amazing you would become? How could I dress you to make you appealing, to make you a “catch?”

Perhaps most overwhelming: what would I name you?

People said I should name you after me, but that didn’t feel right. I wanted to give you your own identity, your own place in this world.

In truth, I was afraid.

Looking back, I realize I held a fear that naming you after me would have increased my felt pressure to define myself in a moment when I didn’t yet know who I was.

I was also afraid to bring you into this world and have you be another big idea that I failed to see to fruition, another project abandoned in the graveyard of my great ideas.

I didn’t trust myself to bring you into this world because I didn’t trust myself to care for you properly.

Chief among my fears was time: I never seemed to have enough time as it was. How would I find time to feed you and nurture you and help you grow?

How You Were Born

Eventually, I realized I didn’t have to commit up front to what you would be, what niche you would occupy. I could birth you into this world and allow you the freedom to evolve into what you were always meant to be. I could choose to trust that all would unfold in the arc of time.

And so, on a late summer morning, I birthed you into this world.

I wish I could say that ended my fears and confusion. As has happened many times in my life, I was often focused in the wrong place.

I’ve made many mistakes.

In the early days I invested so much time and energy and money into creating your look. I hired people to polish you up, then undid their work to create a look I liked better, but I was never satisfied.

I was always fidgeting and playing with your appearance, convinced that this is what mattered most.

In truth, I was trying to cover over the little bit of content I gave you to hold. Trying to distract from the lack of substance with a shiny container.

Reflecting back, I wish I had channeled more of that energy into the substance of you.

My worst fears about bringing you into the world became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I abandoned you for a time, neglected to feed you, and you were hacked.

I was devastated and felt guilty. Once again I had failed.

But I still held hope for the promise of what you could become. I cleaned up the mess, nurtured you back to health, and vowed to be more attentive to your needs.

The Turning Point

Eventually I realized that I would never find time for you. But if I believed enough in the potential for what you could become I could create space for you.

And so I did.

When I began to show up for you daily, our relationship changed. Suddenly we were in this together.

The more space I created for you and the more I shared with you, the more space you held for me and those who came to visit.

In trusting you to hold my ideas, I began to trust myself to express them.

Today I celebrate not just your birthday but our anniversary. Because we are in a relationship.

You have accepted my work without judgment, from my incoherent ramblings to my most articulate thoughts. You have helped my insights and wisdom reach thousands of people. And you have been a mirror for me to see the evolution of my experience.

Each day you surprise me with your reports about what people are reading. In those reports, you’ve taught me that it’s futile to predict what will resonate or what people are looking for.

My job is to let you provide a home for my ideas and then sit back and watch what happens with curiosity and wonder.

I’ll admit that I still look at you and think about how I’d like to adjust your appearance to make you more attractive to the world.

But you’ve taught me that what’s inside matters more, that what attracts people is not the slick packaging but the substance underneath.

You’ve also taught me that it’s not my job to control what a project becomes; my job is to birth my projects into this world, to breathe life into them, and let them show me what they will become.

As you continue to show me what you can become, you have also shown me who I am becoming.

And that, dear one, is the beauty of this relationship: we are growing, evolving, and becoming together.

Thank you for sticking with me, for holding the space for me and for the thousands of people who visit here.

And thank you for being a portal of my awareness and growth.

I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

Love,
Renée