It was quite a day. There was some “excitement” over the contents of my blog. Not knowing what else to do, I password protected it for awhile (I needed some time to think) and went out to the Scrap Girls message board and apologized for unintended hurts and concerns I may have caused.
I meant to take a few days off, but I was sent so many emails and messages of support, that I decided to move back into my blog so that everyone could stop worrying about me.
I was reminded many times by my readers that I have been talking about the need for all of us to be able to express how we feel and then what did I do? I stopped talking because I become upset at the idea that I may hurt people if I talk about my life and feelings here.
These days there aren’t too many things that truly bother me as I interact with others (getting a thicker skin the longer I work with Scrap Girls), but when it was suggested that I may be hurting my team, I felt sick. I know I say this a lot, but it’s true: I do pray for my team and the company off and on all day long. I am concerned about them and when I worry about how the company is doing, it is in the context of how our team and their families might be affected by how things are going. I explain that to you so that you will understand why I reacted so quickly today.
I want to share with you that despite my blog being moderated, I have almost never had to stop the publication of any comments made by my readers. Almost everyone has been respectful as they disagreed with me. I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments so much and have had wonderful exchanges with people that don’t agree with me. In fact, I feel like I’ve made a new friend today because a wonderful person – Teri – began talking to me about our differences. After a bit, the discussion moved to email and she has been very helpful to me as I have tried to figure out what to do here.
I mention this because it is a perfect example of how people who don’t agree with each other can be friends despite their differences, if they are both willing to drop their defensiveness and listen to each other. They don’t have to agree; they just need to be kind. If they are kind, it becomes easy to move past disagreements to discover things that they share and a friendship is formed.
One wise Scrap Girl – Chanell – told me this:
“Oddly enough, I think these events illustrate exactly WHY it's important that you continue to openly publish your blog. Being exposed to, and responding to, viewpoints that are contrary to our own creates the opportunity to further explore the world around us and challenge (or cement) our understanding of our relationship to people and culture. You, sharing yourself through the expression of your opinions on your blog, allowed this other person to express herself, and ultimately began a dialogue between the two of you. Whether you come to an ideological agreement is beside the point. Critical thinking can't happen in a vacuum. Neither can wisdom...or grace.”
One of our valued team members, Dee, pointed this out to me:
"We must NEVER allow any of the voices in our country to be silenced. It doesn't matter if we agree with what people say or not. If we see or hear anyone attempt to do things to silence voices, we need to speak up. We need voices of all kinds in our country – and world. Having various viewpoints heard is critical to maintaining our freedoms."
Recognize those words? I wrote them in an earlier post. Dee gave me my own words as council for what I need to do about my blog.
Think how great it would be if more people who live across the political divide reach out and make friends, as Teri and I have done today. It would be amazing if we were all as wise as Chanell, And wouldn’t it be nice if we always had a little bird on our shoulder named Dee who gently reminded us of who we were.
The fear about speaking and sharing would disappear. The temperature would drop and we could all breathe a little bit better.
I would like to give everyone that has supported me (expressed or unexpressed) because you helped me regain my footings. If I could, I’d send you some downloadable ice cream.
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Some housekeeping: I want to make it clear that this is my personal blog, paid for out of my personal funds. The views expressed here are mine and should not be considered to be official Scrap Girls policy (because they are not). Apparently, there has been some confusion on this point. I pray that if you disagree with anything I have written or may write in the future, you will be able to separate the company from the woman. I am not Scrap Girls. I am just a small cog in the larger picture of thousands of wonderful women (and a few brave men) that make up Scrap Girls. I hope you won’t think that I don’t enjoy you or care about you if we have differences. I hope you will believe that I am sincere in my desire to have good relationships with people of all backgrounds, faiths, political beliefs, and locations.
Because of today’s events, I have made the decision that I am not going to mention my personal blog in the Scrap Girls newsletter again. Even though it reduced my work load substantially to use certain articles in both places, I will not share materials I publish here in the newsletter anymore.
I am not going to run any contests associated with Scrap Girls in here anymore. I have done it a few times in the past because it reduced my workload to not have to take care of multiple locations. This means that all future blog contests we have will be things just for us. (As a note about that: I have always been the one paying for the big blog prizes I’ve awarded for contests.)
What does this mean for you? If you like my blog and think others would like to read it and enjoy what is going on, I’ll need you to tell them about it. Getting new readers is going to be by word-of-mouth now. I’ll probably put a little link to my blog in my board signature, but that will be it. So if you want to help me get more readers, you can send your friends links to articles you think they may enjoy or point them my way.
I truly appreciate all of you. You enrich my life. I hope my little prattlings can continue to make you think, make you smile, or make you roll your eyes because I have just been ridiculous. In other words, I hope it will be okay if I go back to being ME.
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Okay, it’s truly late now and I’m very sleepy. I have read through this post multiple times, but I’m not convinced I have found all of the editing errors. Please excuse me if I have missed a few. It feels important for me to close the issue before I go to bed so that I can sleep soundly. If you do happen to find any glaring errors, please drop me a note so I can fix them. It will be too late for the RSS and email blasts, but at least I can repair the main blog post!
Nite!
