Time Warp Tuesday: Blogoversaries

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday!

For those not familiar with Time Warp Tuesdays, which I host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty, you can share the link to your post in the comment section).

The gist of Time Warp Tuesday is to revisit and share some of our favorite blog entries from our archives and reflect on our journeys since we wrote them.

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The theme for this week’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Blogoversaries

Whether you have been writing your weblog for a year, five years or more, many of us like to share a special blog entry each time we mark the anniversary of when it all began. It can be interesting and therapeutic to reflect on how far we have come from year to year. Choose a blog entry from your archives that you wrote on the day of, or around the time of, one of your “Blogoversaries.” Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might have needed some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

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Time Warp Tuesday: Blogoversaries

It’s my 5th Blogoversary!

When I chose this month’s topic, I knew Time Warp would be falling on my 5th Blogoversary. I considered doing two separate posts: one for Time Warp and one to celebrate/mark five years of blogging. But I knew it would be falling two days after Easter and one week before Molly’s 4th Heavenly Birthday. So for those reasons, among others, I decided to combine them, as I didn’t want to have to write more than one blog entry for today, especially if the days leading up to it could make that more challenging than necessary.

Since I began Time Warp Tuesdays six months ago we have covered a few topics closely related to this week’s. We reflected on Blogging and our Blog Beginnings. I also talked a lot about my experience blogging over the past five years in these two posts before and after I moved to my new blog here at Bereaved and Blessed in February: Sliver Linings & What’s Next and Leap of Faith.

So in some ways I feel like I don’t have a lot left to say about this. However, milestones like this are important to me and I don’t want to let this one pass with out acknowledging the journey that led me to where I am today and how much I have learned and grown since I began blogging on April 10, 2007.

For this Time Warp/Blogoversary post I was also torn which of my previous blogoversary posts to revisit. Below I have included links to all of them. (I know this is sort of a cop-out, not choosing just one, but since this is my blog hop and my actual blogoversary I can do that, right?!) I ask that you click through to read and comment on at least one of them, before returning to read the rest of my post here. I have also included a quote/highlight from each of my blogoversary posts, to give you a sense of the significance of each to me and my journey:

My First Three Blog Entries (April 10, 2007): Welcome, Background and Getting Up to Date on this First IVF Cycle

Welcome to our Benson Family blog! I decided to start this in part to update our family and friends who have shown us, through your love and support, that you want to share in our journey trying to expand our family. I may also add other tidbits about our life and experiences as time goes on. We are currently in our 1st cycle of IVF and I plan to use this blog as a way to keep track of what happens during this cycle and in the future, as well as for your information and for us to be able to refer back to. Thank you for visiting and feel free to comment on this post or any future ones.

My First Blogoversary (2008): We have a tentative date for Molly’s birthday.

I just realized that today is my first “blogoversary.” It can be mind-blowing what can take place in one year’s time. This time last year we were in the midst of stimming for our first fresh IVF cycle. If you told me then where we would be now, I can only imagine what I would think, especially if at that point I could grasp what it would take (4 ART cycles) to get to our pregnancy with Molly, already knowing our journey that preceded us trying ART to expand our family.

Anyway, thank you for following our blog and walking with us over the past year, whether you have been with us since the beginning or just recently found your way here. I have learned so much from those of you fellow bloggers I have met along the way and am grateful for your friendship. I am so happy that many of those I first met through blogging, and then ultimately following your blogs, who too have suffered from primary or secondary infertility are now expecting your own bundles of joy sometime in the next year! May God continue to bless you and your expanding families.

My Second Blogoversary (2009): Sock it to me…It’s my 2nd Blogoversary!

A GREAT BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT HAS EVER READ AND/OR COMMENTED ON MY BLOG OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS!!!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

I look forward to continuing to blog throughout this next phase of our journey and keeping up with all of you and your journeys by following your blogs. If you told me two years ago, as we began of first IVF cycle, that in April of 2009 that my family would be preparing to honor the life and memory of our second child/first daughter/baby sister next week on what would have been her first birthday (April 17) and that we would also be expecting our third child/second daughter/baby sister, I certainly would not have believed you. But such is life. Who knows where me and my family will be in two more years, but I know that I wouldn’t be the same person that I am today with out all of your love, care, concern, support, encouragement, thoughts and prayers. Take care and may God continue to bless you and your loved ones.

My Third Blogoversary (2010):   What If?

Lastly, tomorrow (Saturday, April 10, 2010) is my 3rd Blogoversary!  It has been a very full three years and if you told me then what our life and family would look like now it would have been a stretch for me to fathom the road that led us here. I continue to be grateful to all of you who have walked with me over the past three years, whether you have been with me since the beginning or joined me on the path somewhere along the way.

Though I don’t post here on my blog nearly as often as I did when I started it back in April 2007, when Bob and I were in the midst of our first IVF cycle, I still find it to be an incredible outlet through which I can share and process my thoughts and feelings about my life and my experience building, nurturing and growing our family. As I have shared here before, I also never anticipated the connections I would get to make and the relationships that would form the more I learned about and became rooted in our ALI community here in the blogosphere.

So I thank you my family members and my friends (both those whom I know “in real life” and those whom I may have never met in person, however feel like we have known each other for many years) for reading, for “listening,” for praying, for commenting, for laughing, for crying and everything in between with me for three years and counting! May God bless you and your loved ones today and always.

My Fourth Blogoversary (2011): 4 Years of Blogging: Things I Have Learned

Over the past four years a lot of things have changed about me and my blog, including the children that have come into my life, the primary reasons I choose to write here and the topics I share about. There has also been an evolution in regards to who has read, commented on and “followed” my blog over the years. Though my blog has always been public, in the beginning I was writing for a very small audience of family members and friends that I personally invited to read my blog. However, in time that changed as I found out about and got more involved in the Adoption, Loss and Infertility (ALI) Community here in the blogosphere, as well as more recently when I decided to “come out” about my blog to extended family and friends that may not have known about it before.

I have learned a lot of things over the past four years that I have been sharing about my life and experiences in this space.

***Here is where you left off before you stopped to read one or more of my old posts.***

I found it interesting and amusing to see some of the differences, as well as the common threads, among each of my past blogoversaries posts. In most of them I commented on “if you told me then where I would be now it would have been hard for me to believe…” I am sure we can all say that about so many of our past experiences when we reflect on them.

For me, that is truly one of the most incredible things about having a blog like this: to be able to look back, reflect and see how far we have come over the years.

Not that we can’t get a similar perspective through revisiting our writing in personal journals, but weblogs give us the opportunity to be and feel a part of an interactive community who cares about our well being, supports us and wants to walk with us on our journeys.

The comments we receive on our blog posts often allow us to get the validation we crave and at times to challenge the way we approach, react to and think about the events and people we encounter on our journeys. I have found receiving this kind of feedback to be pivotal to my growth and also contributes to my happiness. Though I do realize that happiness is mostly an “inside job,” that can be so much easier said than lived. We are all human and appreciate getting positive input and good vibes from others.

So once again, when I look back on the past five years in my life, especially as it relates to what I have written and shared here on my blog, it is surreal to see how far I have come and how my family has grown.

When we set out to try to expand our family I had no idea what to expect or how our family building efforts might play out.

I feel very blessed and lucky to have my husband Bob and our living children Sean and Abby in my life, as well as our baby girl Molly and our three other angel babies always in our hearts and watching over us.

It is bittersweet for me to know that we are nearing the end of our journey to try to expand our family, at least that is the direction that makes the most sense to and feels right for us now, at this stage of our life.

I feel immense gratitude to each and every one of you that has walked with me on this journey through secondary infertility and loss since I began blogging five years ago on April 10, 2007.

It has been an honor and a privilege for me to also be part of and walk with you on your journeys.

Thank you for everything you have done and said over the years to help me to survive and thrive, to be better and not bitter and to inspire me to do all that I can to pay it forward to those who will follow in my footsteps.

I don’t know what the future holds for me and my family, but I do know that I intend to continue to write and share about what muses me here at Bereaved and Blessed in the days, months and years to come. In doing so I hope to connect with more people who are also learning to cope and find joy when life doesn’t go as we hope, dream and plan.

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this month, as well as for celebrating my 5th Blogoversary with me today!

I look forward to your feedback about this post, as well as reading and commenting on all of yours.

Please feel free to comment even if you didn’t write your own Time Warp Tuesday post. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

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The topic for the next Time Warp Tuesday (on May 8th) is: Mothering

Some of us are mothers to living children and/or those who have left this world too soon. Some of us are still hoping, wishing, praying and trying to become mothers. We all have mothers, including the women who gave birth to us and the other women in our lives who have helped to mother/shape us into who we are today. Choose a blog entry from your archives that you wrote about mothering. It can be a post where you talked about your own experience as a mother, one in which you wrote about your hopes and dreams for being a mother, a blog entry about mothers who have influenced you and/or however else you may interpret this topic.  Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might need some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

Note: If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that month.

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For those new to Time Warp Tuesday, here is a quick recap of how it works:

1) Browse through your old blog entries to find one that fits the topic for the given month. The topic is shared at the end of the previous month’s “Time Warp Tuesday” post here on my blog (see above for next week’s topic).

2) Write a new blog post in which you introduce, link to and then reflect on your journey since you wrote the older blog post and put it up on your blog on Tuesday. Please include this link https://bereavedandblessed.com/projects-regular-series/time-warp-tuesdays/ in your blog entry, so your readers can find their way to my post with the list of other participants, in case they would like to read more or participate themselves.

3) Share the link to your new post here on Tuesday and then visit, read and comment on the other blogs.

4) After you have done all of these things, you are welcome to grab the code for the Time Warp Tuesday button by clicking here and put it on your blog. The link will take you to a Google Doc where you can copy the code. If your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard, you can use Ctrl-C for Copy and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use your browser’s Edit menu.

5) Check back here on the 2nd Tuesday of the month to find out the new topic, theme or question for the next Time Warp Tuesday (I welcome your ideas and suggestions) and then return to Step 1 of this recap to participate. Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here next month: Tuesday, May 8th (the 2nd Tuesday of the month), when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

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Thank you again for reading, commenting and participating in my Time Warp Tuesday blog hop. Link up below and click through to visit others who are doing the Time Warp! (If you have any trouble with Linky Tools, please share the link to your blog entry in the comment section.  Also, please don’t forget to comment on my post here, as I do not have a link to this (my own) post below, but I would still really appreciate your feedback. xoxo

1. WMOH

2. miss

3. Stumb