I know I’m barely eking out a post a week here, but there’s a good reason for it that I’ll get into soon.
In the meantime, I’ve been reading a lot more blogs lately, which often overloads my brain. So I’ve been turning to the WGN Morning News blog as an amusing sorbet to cleanse my overburdened palette. But yesterday it uh…served up a course that was quite filling. (OK, I’ve bent that metaphor to the breaking point…onward!)
I want to direct you to a couple posts (1,2) from Ana Belaval, Around Town reporter for WGN Morning News. My appreciation for her is well-documented (if not a little hormonal*), and these two posts she’s written only serve to expand it. She lays bare the joys, fears, and difficulties most (not some, but most) new mothers have, especially those who have left a full-time job and plan to return to it. To whit:
It is a constant guessing game and when you think you have something down pat, the little bundle of joy changes the rules of the game. Add to that how sick I was after labor and how I cried every day for 2 weeks thanks to lack of sleep and hormonal mess, and I almost begged my boss to call me back to work.
It’s not only refreshing because of the topic – there’s still very little discussion in this country of the kind of physical and mental toll a woman undergoes after pregnancy – but also because of its presence on a corporate blog.
That’s not a dig against WGN’s blog, mind you. But blogs like that are designed to do certain things, and open up a frank discussion on the difficulties of working mothers isn’t usually one of them.
It’s illustrative of why blogs are important, why they require transparency to remain effective, and how they contribute to the culture even in ways you don’t expect.
* In retrospect, I probably would have written that post differently since it’s a little to close in content to what commenter #8 says, which is not an association I’d like to be guilty of. Especially since it’s the second post that comes up when you Google her name. Oh well, I can always blame it on this guy.
