Finding Your Niche in Blogging

So far so good.  I’m continuing to write, getting my word out (even if to just a handful of readers) and feeling really good about what I’m putting out there.  It’s not without doubt though.  According to the bloggers who have been around for a while, it’s highly encouraged to find your niche.  What is it you’re good at and how can you help people?  These are great questions and ones I continue to ask myself.  I’m taking it as a good sign that I’m still asking myself these questions.  I’m a work in progress (gross understatement).  A niche is supposed to be specific.  But am I being specific enough?  If I’m not writing and helping people, what am I doing?

On my ‘About Me’ page I write about why I’m choosing to start writing now.  My focus in this explanation is that I have an insatiable urge to write.  While this is true, it’s more than that.  When my oldest son, Chase, first passed away, I thought about writing then too.  There was so much pain.  I went back to work about two-and-a-half-weeks after he was gone and yes, it’s clearly obvious to me now, that I did so because I needed distraction and was most likely not thinking clearly.  The benefit was that I didn’t spend my whole day drinking and finding a way to turn every Journey song into an ode about child loss (not hard to do).  When I wasn’t purposefully trying to distract myself with, to be honest, stuff that wasn’t that important, or trying to put on my happy face, I thought about getting my pain out on paper.  I remember my best friend giving me a beautiful journal to write in.  I was looking forward to filling up these pages, until I really started to think about what I’d be putting on them.  The world’s darkest journal ever.  I don’t think I was ready to see those words on paper.  I was hoping that most of the thoughts at this time would be fleeting and I was worried that if I did put them in writing, I would somehow be branded with them for a longer period of time than I wanted to be.  Regardless of the length of time, these thoughts were honest, painful, true and worthy of every intent to put pen to paper.  At times now, it might help me to look back on these words – to help me realize on my still not-so-great grief days, that I’ve come a long way.

Enter, today.  My grief continues to evolve, but it’s definitely morphed into something that I never thought I’d see…sadness married with actual happiness.  I remember the first few times I caught myself genuinely smiling after Chase.  I felt guilty for not being fully submerged in sadness.  It takes a long time to get to a place where you actually feel that your loved one would really want you to be happy.  That you actually care to even honor those sentiments.

So this is where I find myself.  A mostly genuinely happy person, who challenges herself to find the humor in almost everything and who is trying to navigate her mom flare.  Flare for raising a child in heaven, flare for juggling my two children here with me, and the flare of having to figure out how to marry the two into what has become our family.  This is my niche.  So yes, on some days I feel like writing about my current parenting struggles or spewing situational anecdotes, and on some days I feel the need to touch on the struggles that my oldest son’s short life still bring me.  These are the two worlds that I’m navigating and this is as focused as I can be right now.

I’m currently trying to make blogging connections through a tangled mess we like to call the internet and social media.  Just when I thought I’d never experience online dating.  But who should I be reaching out to?  

On some days I totally relate to the mommy bloggers and on some days I relate to the families who are posting about their own child loss struggles.  I can’t pick just one side or the other, because I wouldn’t be true to who I am.  I can’t only be a mommy blogger, because it would start to eat away at me that I’m in some way ignoring my oldest son.  I can’t only be a loss mom blogger, because wrapping myself in this blanket of sadness is just, well, exhausting.  Where’s the big neon sign for mommy bloggers with flare?  I’d like to join that group please.

This does still feel weird to me and I’m wondering if it feels that same way to my readers.  I mean, like I said before, it’s not going to change, this is where my life is at.  But if I take a view from thirty thousand feet, it seems a little back-and-forth.  One day I’m drafting a post about my humorous day at the park and the next I’m drawn to write about the days leading up to my son’s funeral.  At this point, I’m hoping to connect with both the mommy bloggers and the moms navigating through grief.  We all have our piece of flare and I just have to find those whose flare fits best with mine.  This is my mission and I choose to accept it.  I think I’m going to need a bigger map though.