One, Final Love Letter

When I started this blog in 2008, I had no idea what I was doing. 311 blog posts later (312, if you include this one) I still don't, but oh, what a fun, fun ride it's been!

Six years.

I have been sharing the "view from here" for six long, glorious years and I am so very, very grateful for all of it. My sons and I have grown enormously during that time and so many wonderful people have entered our sphere, through this blog.

Thank you all for reading and crying and laughing and sharing. There is nothing quite as satisfying as knowing that my words, tumbled onto these pages, have reduced someone to tears or made them snort coffee from their nose.

My heart is full up with the love I've known here at Life With Bellymonster. And yet....


And yet.

I have struggled, this past year, NOT to write the stories that fill my heart and mind. Struggled with knowing that even though *I* consider oversharing my special gift, my children may not. They are growing older, wiser and I need to respect that my journey as their mother does not necessarily mean that theirs need to be shared, too.

I've been chewing on this for months now, trying to find the balance between my needs and theirs.

I've also been thinking hard about the other children in my world - the ones whose faces and stories have taken up much space in my head and my heart. And whose stories I cannot share here. Or anywhere, really, without betraying their trust and their confidences.

It's a conundrum. And it's a sign.

I don't know what I'll do next, darling readers. I imagine that I'll build another blog, though its content and purpose isn't clear yet, in my mind. I cannot imagine NOT writing, oversharing, inducing coffee-snot and tears.

 I am choosing to trust that it will be, though, and that it will be a glorious work-in-progress, like this one has been.

Like I am. Like we all are.

In the meantime:

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for allowing me to share my world with you and for offering me such wonderful, poignant glimpses of yours in return.

Be blessed. Be good. Be the good, beloveds.


Much love,
Bellymonster (and the Reds)

Bellymonster and the Reds, 2014