It’s been over a year now.
A lovely lady (the Mum of a successful blogger in fact) and I were talking. She asked me how my blog was going. I explained that I had struggled to write since Mum died – that I found it hard to write about parenting and to do reviews etc, with passion and that I’d only really written about my Mum’s death, grief and cancer.
“You don’t want to keep going on about that though, do you?” she said.
She meant it in a kind way. She knows the world of blogging and how fickle some people can be and that one of the rules is ‘don’t alienate your audience’. If you’ve worked hard to build your loyal readers, give them what they want to read.
She was totally right and she meant no disrespect to me and that’s why I took none and it didn’t bother me. But it did get me thinking.
I’m grateful for every single one of you that reads my blog (all 5 of you!!) Ok, there’s a few more than 5 but we’re not talking about hundreds of thousands of avid readers here, but I think that I have finally found my niche. My passion.
I want to always do my craft and baking tutorials or how to’s, as they are my fun, my relaxation etc and I want to write about being a single parent and chronic illness, but, my biggest passion is Lung Cancer, spreading awareness, grief and showing my reality.
This is my life.
Most days, most of the time, things are ok. Bear and I have fun, we laugh, we enjoy our life, we go for days out and we live a good life.
I don’t always write about these things as they are often the everyday ‘normal’ mundane parts of life.
I share them on Instagram. My stories are my every day life – the good and the bad, and when I manage to get a good picture, I share it.
But.
I share the other part of my life.
The pain that my Mum’s death caused Bear and I.
I share the way that grief suddenly hits you out of nowhere and how, after nearly 18 months, I still can get a quick shock when a part of my conscience catches up and I realise that it’s my Mum that I’m talking about and that it’s my Mum that died. It’s weird.
So. I did start another blog that has somehow disappeared off the internet (!) and that is where I have started to publish the diary that I kept when Mum was being diagnosed but please do stick with me here, on hannahspannah. I will get back to the types of posts that I used to write but I’m not the same person anymore. The biggest thing to me is that I am honest and ‘real’ and I wouldn’t be either of those if I just glossed over the last year or so.
I also hope that what I write might be helpful to a person going through the things that I have.
Thank you for reading
Love
Whilst I get the whole “don’t alienate your audience” thing I think it’s also important to be true to yourself and what’s most important in your life. I also think it’s an incredibly valuable resource for others. People who’ve not been through a major loss can often not understand that grief isn’t just a couple of weeks of feeling crap and then back to business as usual. People who have lost a loved one often feel like the people around them are impatient for them to get “back to normal” as if their grief is unusual in some way. By blogging about your grief you’ll help a whole new audience to come to terms with their own grief and to see that they are not “taking too long” to get over a major loss.
Perhaps you will lose people who don’t want to know about your grief or about lung cancer – but perhaps you will reach a new, different audience who will really benefit from your knowledge and insight.
Vicky, thank you so so much for your comment. I know that you get it after sadly losing your Dad. Sending lots of love xx