community – The Mum Reviews

Lately I’ve been feeling a mix of fear, anger, helplessness, and a strange sense of responsibility I can’t quite shake. The world feels a little bit broken. There’s been an accumulation of cruelty, fear-driven rhetoric, systems that were meant to protect people failing to do so, and a widening willingness to “choose a side”, and to look away instead of protecting the vulnerable.

You scroll. You flinch. You feel small. Powerlessness is exhausting.

It reminds me of a scene from The NeverEnding Story: the Rockbiter staring at his hands and saying, “They look like big, strong hands… don’t they?” He believed he should have been able to stop the Nothing swallowing up his friends.

That scene comes back to me now because this moment feels similar. Our world’s Nothing is creeping in, fuelled by apathy, distraction, despair and, yes, careless hatred. My good strong hands can’t fix it, as much as I wish they could. I want to gather up the vulnerable in my arms and protect them all. But I can’t.

So what can I do?

I can start by taking responsibility for the spaces I actually inhabit: my home, my workplace, my friendships, my online circles.

I can build new connections in my communities. I can start conversations with people who see things differently from me. Not with the goal of changing their minds immediately, but with the intention of understanding where they’re coming from and seeing where our values overlap.

I can ask questions instead of shutting down.

I can stay curious instead of defensive.

I can say, “I hear you, but have you thought about it this way?”

I can make room for nuance in a world addicted to certainty and hot takes.

I can stay connected to people I disagree with, instead of deleting them and shrinking my world into a mirror of myself.

These aren’t dramatic gestures. They won’t single-handedly solve the world’s crises. But a Nothing grows through silence and disconnection, and these small acts are the opposite of that. They are how it’s stopped. Not by one person holding the line, but by millions of small, stubborn acts of humanity refusing to give way.

Last weekend I attended Mumsnet’s Blogfest 2016. It was my first blogging conference, and I was a massive noob as I’ve only been blogging for about 4 months. I attended thinking I was going to learn how to grow and promote my blog. But I left with something much more important – a renewed sense of purpose.

Before I began blogging, I didn’t really know what it was all about. I thought people just wrote diaries about their daily lives and didn’t mind if strangers read them. I started my blog to offer advice about how to plan successful days out and holidays with young children in tow. I was going to keep it impersonal and apolitical, but my plans changed very early on.

I soon learned about the amazing community of parenting bloggers. These were intelligent, talented people who were writing about things for which they cared deeply. Parenting is not a walk in the park, and they were honestly sharing their achievements and failures in a way that could make others feel not so alone.

They were writing about important issues such as coping with miscarriages. They were removing the stigma from PND and other mental health issues by sharing their stories and coping strategies. They were standing up for others – both those like themselves and those who were different. They were campaigning for equal rights for all.

The other bloggers changed my goals for my blog and I started writing about issues I cared about too.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Blogfest was not just about beautiful photography and great SEO. It was about how blogging can make a difference.

We are living in a time when politics are making people feel uncertain about the future of the world. One of the drawbacks of social media is that it can filter out alternative voices, making it easier for people to only see what they want to. We’re living in a world where the truth belongs to whoever is powerful enough to propagate their version of it.

In such a world, bloggers have a surprising amount of power and responsibility. We are in a privileged position because we have the resources to publish our views and the skills to communicate them effectively.

That gives us the opportunity to campaign for what is right. We can speak up when others might fall silent. We can speak truth to power.

Blogfest was about so much more than monetizing your blog or increasing your pageviews. It was about a beautiful community of women and men who, unusually compared to so many other professions, support each other more often than they compete with each other. Who defend each other’s right to speak even when they disagree.

So as I look forward to continuing my blog, I will try not to obsess over stats or which brands I’m working with. I will focus on whether the things I’m saying will make a difference. I’ll add my voice to the many who are challenging dominant narratives. I will not be silent when I see injustice. And if that helps just one person feel less alone, or makes just one person reevaluate their thinking, then that makes it all worthwhile.

I’m going to leave you with this YouTube video that they played during the campaigning session at Blogfest. It was a speech from Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, about how one voice can effect change. The speech may be 8 years old, but I’m more fired up and ready to go than ever.

Tag: community

Strong hands, small acts

I didn’t know blogging could change the world