I realized today, while having a writing session with my academic supervisor, that I haven’t been writing lately. Not for this blog, but also not for any of my other blogs. It seems that one thing that happens to me when I am grieving is that I stop writing – or more, that I lose the inspiration to write.

I noted it most profoundly shortly after my mother died. I realized that I had counted on her reading my blog, so I always knew that she was there.

With Lori, she didn’t read my blog that often – mostly when it crossed her Facebook feed, but we talked. When we didn’t actually talk, we texted. When she was well enough to hike, we would spend hours talking. I heard the same stories over and over. I shared the same stories over and over. We also talked about life and what was bugging us that day. And we talked about death. We talked about how she was preparing for death, and her desire to get the meds for the end-of-life-options act, not necessarily so that she could use them, but to reduce her anxiety about dying. To know that she could use them if she wanted to. In the end, it didn’t come to that. She passed quickly in the arms of her oldest son. She often told me that they grew up together – she was 19 when she had him – she worked two jobs while going to college just so that they could live.

This morning, during the writing session, I was forced to sit in front of my computer and just write. I didn’t necessarily feel like I had read enough, but I needed to just sit and write. It turns out that I had a lot to say. I went back to some blog posts I had written before mom was sick, while I was working on my dissertation. There were several reflective posts that fit into the part of the dissertation chapter that I’m currently working on. It made me realize that I may be further along than I thought, but also that I do a lot of my thinking while writing, and by not writing, I’m not processing things.

I’m not feeling overwhelmingly sad, which is something that I was afraid was going to happen. I’m doing lots of grieving in community – in that I’m grieving with different groups of friends and different times, and each time I go through this grieving in community process I feel better. I am so glad to be part of such an amazingly supportive community. But, since the grieving has stopped me from writing, it has in some ways stopped me from processing.

And so, I’m going to try to spend more time writing – more time blogging – more time writing in this reflective way. I need to start ‘seeing’ blog posts again. It is like I’ve lost my muse, and I no longer see the world through the lens of blog posts – or more, that I’m not seeing blog posts from the everyday things that are happening in my life.

I’m going to try to keep writing. I’m going to watch for Marie’s weekly writing prompt and see if that inspires me, but also I’m going to look for writing prompts in the other things that I do. I have several things to think about regarding blogging, so that is a start.

Here is to getting back on the metaphorical horse, and getting back to writing again. I miss the connection I have to my readers, even when I don’t know who is actually reading it. There is still a sense of connection there. Interesting.