I have journaled since I was able to write incoherent sentences. As a child, I don't remember ever being without a locked diary underneath my mattress. When I found internet diaries, it was at a time in my life when I was in such deep distress and in such ultimate pain, I felt that it would be kinder to be dead than to continue living in the misery that my life had become. And as it always has done, journaling was a way to overcome my despair and work my way out of depression. But my reprieve didn't last long. The invasion of Iraq threw me into another kind of stress just as powerful as the divorce that had me already blogging. My teenage son, fresh out of Advanced Infantry Training was fighting his way through a desert of fanatics. My original blog became about being a military mom, then without skipping a heartbeat, no sooner had he come home than I was diagnosed with breast cancer and the shift to writing about my treatments was a natural occurrence. I never questioned if I should or shouldn't share this with a virtual audience. I just did because it is the way I process and the way I stay sane. I do sometimes worry about the way I come across, and I too angry or whiny or do some people just wish I'd just put on my big girl panties and get over it. But the truth is that I'm not writing for them, I'm writing for me. I need this to keep accepting the next step that I must take in this journey.
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