The Secret

When I meet people in my everyday life, I don’t tell them about this blog.

Most people don’t find out until we become Facebook friends. And at that point, there’s really no hiding it anymore.

Because once you’re a Facebook friend, you will eventually find it. I’m required to share my Chicago Parent posts on my personal page, and then, well… down the rabbit hole you go.

So I’ve become very intentional about who I let into my inner circle.

I know that sounds snooty or elitist, but it’s not that at all.

It’s simpler than that.

I am a little afraid of telling people about this blog.

Because as ridiculous as it sounds, it has stayed my “secret.”

When I first started writing here, I didn’t intend to tell anyone outside my closest family and a few friends. It began almost on a whim, a small release, something I did for no reason other than I wanted to.

I would sit alone in the basement, open my laptop, and start putting words on an empty page.

No plan. No expectations. Just writing.

Now, five years later, I’ve had opportunities I never imagined. Writing for Chicago Parent, being part of Listen to Your Mother, and even being included in a book coming out this fall.

And there are moments when it still feels almost too big for me.

It’s amazing and strange and wonderful all at once.

I can still picture the exact moment it began. Sitting at that computer while baby Ella napped and little Anna played with friends in the basement on a summer afternoon in June of 2010.

It doesn’t feel like it’s only been five years. It feels like something longer. Something layered.

Over time, the way I describe myself has shifted. Salesgirl, manager, student, wife, single mom, mom.

I’ve held a lot of titles.

But for the last 15 years, being a mom has been the one that has defined me most.

In my writing world, I feel completely at ease. I can talk about my family, my friends, the everyday chaos and humor of our lives. The baby messes in the bathtub, the math homework that makes me drink wine, first loves, prom nights, all of it.

We revisit memories through words. We work through emotions one paragraph at a time. We connect with readers in a way that feels surprisingly intimate, even with strangers.

But in everyday life, it’s different.

When I meet neighbors or parents from school, I know that if they ever search long enough, they’ll eventually find it.

And then they’ll learn my secret.

That I am a blogger. That I write about my life, my past, my obsessions with Bruce Hornsby, tacos, and John Hughes.

Online, I am an open book in a way I don’t often explain out loud.

And I do sometimes wonder what that looks like from the outside.

Most people don’t process their lives in 300-word pieces. They don’t turn everyday moments into essays. If they talk about these things, it’s over wine at a table or around a backyard fire, not in paragraphs carefully spaced on a screen.

And maybe that’s why writers and bloggers find each other so quickly, even when they’ve never met. There’s a shared language there. A recognition.

It’s why we go to writing conferences and talk about them for the next two years afterward.

These are my people.

They already know the secret.

This writing life has become such a part of me that I can’t imagine it disappearing. I didn’t make a lot of money doing it. I still don’t.

But this blog has been a soft place to land for five years. A place to think out loud. A place that has felt, in its own way, like therapy when I didn’t have it in other forms.

For five years, I’ve been talking here the way someone might talk on a couch across from a therapist.

And yes, you’ve been the most affordable therapist I’ve ever had. Don’t send me a bill.

It has given me friendships I never expected, connections with people all over the world, and a way of seeing things I would not have developed otherwise.

It has opened doors. It has shaped ideas. It has changed how I understand myself, my family, my relationships, and the world around me.

This blog has changed me in ways I didn’t know I needed.

And here’s the part I didn’t see coming:

This is what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I just didn’t know it until I started doing it.

I never knew I wanted to be a writer until I became one.

And maybe that is the real secret.