Blogging, how did we get here?

I have spent many years in the blogger-sphere. And it has helped me grow as a person. Not just by reading but also by writing. I started my blogger journey more than a decade ago. I was closing in on my 30s, still unsure who I was and what I wanted in life. Blogging helped me define that. Or, at the very least, narrow it down.

For years I had struggled with self-esteem issues. I had been – and gotten out of – an abusive (heterosexual) relationship and was slowly realizing that I was, in fact, very much not straight. Never had been. While the abusive part had less to do with me not being straight and him being a psychopath (I’ll elaborate on that later), it still impacted my self-esteem, as did me being closeted.
Reading blogs, watching vlogs, and starting my blog helped me sort some out. Not all of it (that’s where therapy comes in), but it helped me focus on myself, and it helped me realize that I was gay.

Back then, I couldn’t – or rather wouldn’t – put a label that said ‘lesbian’ on myself. In my mind, that had a rather negative connotation to it. Like it was something people would say mockingly. “Oh, she’s a lesbian.” So, I went with gay. Sometimes queer. It just sounded more neutral.

While blogging was a therapeutic way for me to deal with coming out and how I perceived myself, it has also been helpful in other ways.

I love cooking. I was not fond of it as a child or even as a teenager, but it became something I could handle after getting out of my abusive relationship. Something I was good at. And something I could see myself pursuing a career in.
But I started small with a food blog. At that point, I was married to my daughter’s father, an American. We were living in Scandinavia, so he missed a lot of different foods we couldn’t get over there. And so my blog of foods from all over the world was created. I enjoyed experimenting with recipes and describing the process, making it possible for others to recreate or be inspired by what I was making.
Eventually, it faded out. With a baby and a new job involving a lot of commuting and medical issues, my priorities changed, and blogging was no longer on top of my list.

But I’ve wanted to get back into it again.
So here we are.