Three Looks Good On Me

Three years ago today I launched this little blog. I remember sitting there thinking about hitting the publish key for the first time, baring my soul with the world. At the time, I was a mom of a two-month-old, just preparing to get back to work and trying to find a creative outlet where I could retain my “Martha-ness”. I was scared shitless that people would judge me. I was worried I might come off as “privileged white girl” because my life was really, really great and I knew it. But I decided I didn’t care and went for it anyway.

My first blog posts were weekend recaps including all of the fun things we did as a family, a recipe for kick-ass guacamole I still make all the time, and one particularly hard one about our decision to formula feed Dane in the midst of what I didn’t know at the time was most likely postpartum depression.

I grew so much in that first 6 months of blogging. I let go of all the worry that people were taking my life and picking it apart and honestly, it felt so liberating.

If I had had any idea what my “little corner of the internet” as I called it then, and still do now, would turn out to be just 3 short years later… I would have probably fainted.

Staying Martha started as light fun posts about food, fashion and beauty products, and stories from a new inexperienced mom. Today, it serves a very different purpose – one of advocacy, soul sharing and complete transparency from one survivor to many. We are all survivors, remember… of something or another.

Staying Martha’s 180 posts have been viewed by almost 73k people in 104 countries across the world, and shared by many more. I am so humbled by that.

Sometimes during my darkest days going through grieving my dad’s death and going through treatment, I wished I didn’t have the blog because I often felt this obligation to write, even when I didn’t feel like I was strong enough. But now I know better. I know that sharing my story has given wings to so many conversations about our health, encouragement to people to give themselves monthly breast exams, and just awareness in general.

I think I will always ebb and flow with my writing. Sometimes keeping up monthly like I want to (my goal is always 2 blog posts per month), and sometimes there will be big gaps. It’s always on my heart to share my journey, now more than ever as I make my growing list of women who share the same passions and fears that I do.  These include cancer of course, but so much more… it’s the journey to fill all my buckets with the good stuff, to search out happiness and to allow myself to heal.

So whether you’ve been with me since day one and that guacamole recipe… or this is your first stop here – thanks for following along. Together we can do anything.