Time Warp Tuesday: Attention

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the eighth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday here on Four of a Kind!

Today is also the fifteenth day of NaBloPoMo, so if you found your way here from the Blogroll (I’m #313 on the list of 2,216) or the open thread, a warm welcome to you! This post is what I hope and intend will be the fifteenth of thirty posts, in thirty days, here on my blog. I am excited to have reached the half way point and feel confident that I will will be able to go the distance. I appreciate your encouragement and I am excited to be doing NaBloPoMo for the first time this year!

In case you missed my original post about Time Warp Tuesdays, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up your post, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty using it, you can share the link to your post in the comment section here).

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Time Warp Tuesday: Attention

When I originally approached this week’s topic, I misread Jen’s suggestion and looked for which of my blog entries had literally gotten the most comments and therefore I supposed the most attention. Only two of my posts have ever received over 50 comments and they were on the day that our daughter Molly was born and died and on our daughter/”rainbow baby” Abigail’s birthday. Both were birth (and in one case death) announcements of sorts and people seemed to come out of the woodwork to show my family and me their love and support (on two of the happiest and most bittersweet days of our lives) through commenting here.

I know in both instances our big news was shared via the LFCA, as well as in other’s blog entries with links to the posts encouraging people to visit and comment. Though both times I was in a fog when the posts were written and the comments received, I have returned to them many times over the years since to read the incredibly kind and thoughtful words that family, friends and fellow bloggers wrote. I re-read all of the combined 100 + comments in preparation for this post and was very moved by the overwhelming expressions of care and compassion.

For this week’s topic, as I understand it and I think Jen intended it to be, I decided to try to take out of contention all of my “big announcement” blog entries (including Molly’s birth and death and the posts leading up to her passing, my announcement that we were expecting Abby, that she was a girl, her birthday and pictures of her and with our family soon after her birth), which make up the majority of my posts that have gotten the most comments and attention over the years. Though these blog entries and the many comments they received mean a lot to me, I don’t believe they represent my best or most inspired writing. I think that they got so much “attention” because they were written during some of the best and worst moments of my life, during times when I needed all of the love, care, concern, prayers, support and encouragement that people were willing and able to shower me with.

So when looking for a blog entry that “generated the most interesting comments (in your opinion) or a post that you were surprised got so much attention,” I came across this one. Though it *only* received five comments, it is one of three of my posts that Mel has chosen to feature in her Friday Blog Roundup over the years, which I certainly didn’t expect when I wrote it. Also, one of those five comments is one of my all-time favorite comments that I have ever received here on my blog, so that made this post especially memorable for me.

This is the blurb that Mel wrote about my blog entry for her round up:

A post about being finished with having children. Once they receive news about the chance of having another child with the same medical conditions as Molly, they make a soft decision to end family building, but she states: “That said, it is one thing to come to that decision on our own and felt very different to me last week when I was under the impression that someone else, the Pediatric Geneticist, was discouraging us from going down that road again.” I love the end of the post, bringing together the concept of the alpha and the omega.  It’s just a gorgeous read.

Here is the link to the post that I chose:

Omega and Alpha

Please go and read the post that I am reflecting on today (and comment if you choose), if you haven’t already, and then come back here to see what I have to say about my journey since I wrote it.

***Here is where you left off before you stopped to read my old post.***

Revisiting this post was especially timely for me, as recently Bob and I have been discussing how soon we may be ready to move from our soft decision (to be done trying to expand our family) to a hard one. We continue to believe that being done is best for us and our family, but making this choice final is not something we take lightly. After all we have been through on our journey to build our family, moving on will never be easy, especially for me, and has a lot of feelings and emotions wrapped up in it. Reading this blog entry was very interesting and bittersweet for me to see what I was thinking, and how I was feeling about all of this, almost two years ago.

The comment I referred to earlier in my introduction to my Omega and Alpha post was this one from Are You Kidding Me? She wrote: 

A girl from the Southwest side of Chicago, stopping by (via Stirrup Queen’s Friday Blog Roundup) to say that it takes courage to let go. Most people think that the courageous are those who take risks, but there is a lot of courage in turning away from things you want too. Much luck, and enjoy your beautiful children.

Reading her words today mean as much to me now as they did then. So often we think that taking risks and trying again show courage and strength and that can be true. But I found her perspective on our situation so validating, as I agree that it also “takes courage to let go” and to move on. As Bob and I contemplate taking the next steps to put an end to our family building, ten years after we started trying to have our first child, reflecting on this post and our journey since has helped me to make peace with the idea that it is okay to allow our hopes, dreams and ideals for our lives and our families to evolve.

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this week. 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 this week. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

Below you will find next week’s topic and I hope that you will join me back here on Tuesday when we “do the Time Warp again!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The topic for next week’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Thanksgiving
 
With it being the week of Thanksgiving, choose a post from your archives in which you talked about something(s) in your life that you are thankful for. I know being able to focus on what I am grateful for in my life has helped me during difficult and uncertain times, as well in keeping a positive attitude in my day to day life. 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? Are you still thankful for the same thing(s) that you were back then? 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? What do you feel thankful for today, this month and/or this year?

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 week. Thank you to all who have already shared suggestions for future weeks! I do plan to use your ideas soon, but thought it would be nice to do a “holiday themed” Time Warp next week, which Jen from Here We Go Again actually did suggest (to do holiday themed topics at the appropriate times of year). Thanks Jen!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 week. The topic is shared at the end of the previous week’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 http://chicagobensons.blogspot.com/search/label/Time%20Warp%20Tuesdays 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 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 every Tuesday to find out the new topic, theme or question for the following week (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 on next Tuesday when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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. unglamorous

2. Here We Go Agai