BlogHer Re-Entry: It's Real



We constantly change. And as much as I would love to do what I usually do after a BlogHer conference, which is to write a humorous post, I find myself being pulled instead to tell what this annual conference has come to mean.

Bloggers attending this conference joke about coming back home, we call this “re-entry”. When the perfection of days among your people leave you wanting more of it when you get back home. It's hard to settle for the day to day after you've had Disneyland for grown ups. The laughter, good food, parties and dinners with friends, keynote speakers that are celebrities, and workshops, panels, presentations all feeding us more of what we love to talk about most: our blogging. It's hard to go home to grocery runs, laundry duty, carpool schedules and no one serving us coffee when you've experienced the world's largest social media conference for women. You don't want what you've had, to end. You don't want who you are when there, to disappear again.

There is no such thing as a perfect experience, but these four days spent with kindred spirits who love to do what I do, which is to put our words together and send them out into the internet, comes pretty close.

I have been writing my words, my stories, since I learned how to print. Before then, I would whisper my stories into my dolls' ears while I held them, falling asleep. I would listen to my Abuela tell her stories and knew that some day, I wanted to do the same. To learn to weave my words into a dance. Standing together, we shared her worn wooden cutting board, chopping the onion we needed for dinner, and I would be lulled into the expanse of the rise and fall of the waves of my grandmother's voice.

At my first BlogHer five years ago, I arrived with preconceptions about the conference and its attendees. I was worried I wouldn't fit among them, I was too nervous to think beyond how an introvert would survive four days with strangers while states away from home. I attended every workshop and I went to every party. I concentrated so hard in absorbing everything that BlogHer offered that I forgot to think about saying hello.

A conference was about air fare, hotel fees, arranging child care, and making the four days you had there count. I was at an actual conference, my first one in 15 years since I had stopped working full time and I was determined to return home, armed and ready to tackle my dreams. Instead, I was among people, so many people, and who are these people? On my last night at this first conference, I sat outside of the hotel on the San Diego marina and tried to hear my grandmother's voice in the lapping moonlit waves that rose and fell. Blogging had allowed me to call myself a writer. I was here, to be exposed to different styles of writing. And there were so many here, like me, did we all want the same thing?

At that first conference, I met a writer named Polly Pagenhart. She wrote in the style that I aspired to — she spoke in the voice of what I had grown up hearing. Stinging in its honesty, and in the naked style of truth. I had only heard a style like this once before, and that was in my own family. Polly's stories were hands up and life out loud. Chest open wide and arms taking it all in. Her stories were no exaggerated version. I know, because I had been hearing this style my entire life. It's a voice that makes for great storytellers. I had been living without hearing the voice of my grandmother for a very long time, but here I was, in San Diego at a BlogHer conference, and feeling like home again.

I came home from my first BlogHer conference, heavily influenced by the people I had met and the panels I had attended. I thought of my career goals. I flew back home on the plane, unable to settle into my seat, because I never thought that I would find people like me.

I was at my second BlogHer, looking for more ways to grow into what I hoped would bring me what I then thought I wanted. This time, I was in New York, and I ticked off activities and get-togethers, cobbling together and leaving only time enough to sleep. I was determined to find a way to see my stories published. Again, my intent was to learn and absorb.

On my third BlogHer conference in Chicago, I had come feeling more prepared. I was going to tackle the technical side of what I felt I needed to know, Search Engine Optimization, Coding, Pinterest, Google Plus, maybe even learn about video. Could I self publish? All of this was offered, and all of this, I took in.

Last year, my fourth BlogHer, I arrived for the first time feeling that I had something I could offer. In the five years since I first began blogging, I had learned that technique, technology, networking, tips, tricks, and contacts are all lost in the wind without the most important net that pulls everything together. That of belief in your words. It was this realization that I wanted to share with the conference that had given so much to me over the past four years. I was given the incredible honor of saying exactly those words of encouragement, and gratitude, as a keynote speaker for BlogHer's 10th year anniversary. The moment I had on stage being part of celebrating what BlogHer has accomplished, remains one that is surreal.

We constantly change. We are dynamic, not permanent or unaffected by our world. We are works in progress. And our lives are something we look at from the stance of moments that have passed. Our experiences are our process, and the people we see and meet are all part of what shapes us. Just as Polly did with me from that first BlogHer meeting five years ago.

It's been over five years that I've been writing on my blog. Some days I fear that I'll run out of the gift, the quickness of words that fly off my fingers. I had a dream once. I was unable to recognize the shapes of letters and I couldn't understand what I was looking at on the pages of a book. It left me terrified.

I arrived this year at BlogHer, my fifth conference, with an appreciation of what I can do. Once, I thought that anyone could write, and keep doing it. You just had to sit and type. But BlogHer has fostered a respect for myself and an awe, for what I do. I do something and have persevered at something, and this is what gives me my good days. I began BlogHer conferences wanting to learn how to write. I never imagined the trail would lead to recognizing that I had achieved the dream I had so cautiously wished for myself when I was four years old and held my dolls as I fell asleep.

At the closing party for this year's BlogHer, I sat on the pier, inhaling deeply of the night air. On either side of me was an amazing, intelligent, generous woman. As the sun set, I listened to the waves rise and fall, much like my Abuela's voice so many years ago. It was so much like what these six years with BlogHer have been. Stirring, moving, calming and powerful, water so deep and beautiful, and part of an evening that was as close to perfect as you can get.

BlogHer, thank you for reminding me why I write, and for motivating me to keep on writing. Thank you for holding the mirror of confidence in front of me, the one I have never seen before this year. One that reflects back what I have always hoped to see, the face of a writer.

 

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