Ladies, check it out! It’s me and Heather Armstrong, the creator of dooce.com, the most popular blog on the internet (that’s a fact, not an exaggeration). She was at Book People in Austin, TX last night promoting her memoir, It Sucked and then I Cried. She’s the one on the left and I’m the one in the dowdy gym clothes with a purse strap strangling my boob.
As I anticipated, she was hilarious, heartfelt and dressed like a six-month pregnant rock star. She talked about when she writes (in the morning), the pressure to come up with new content for her blog (dressing up her dogs when writers block strikes) and her new love for Twitter (much easier than writing a book, she admitted).
After waiting in line for half an hour with about two hundred other women having their own celebrity blogasm, I finally made it to the signing table. I introduced myself and made mention that I, too, would be reading from my memoir The Package Deal: My (not-so) Glamorous Transition from Single Gal to Instant Mom at Book People very soon. She smiled and gave me an indulgent nod. I understood this to mean, we’re here tonight to talk about my book, not yours, k?
If I would have allowed myself to continue blabbing, I would have told Heather that she was the one who inspired me to start Stepmother’s Milk in the first place. It’s true. Not long after I moved to Austin and became an “instant mother,” someone turned me on to her website. I’d never heard of her. Hell, I didn’t even know what a blog really was and I didn’t have the slightest grasp on the enormity and influence of the mommy bloggers.
Well, Heather changed all that. She introduced me to a new online world where she wrote truthfully about motherhood and marriage, frequently confessing that it was a pain in the ass. I immediately appreciated how her candor and humor provided relief to mothers all over the country. She made women feel like they weren’t in it alone, and that’s when I had my AHA moment. We steps needed our OWN online community of support.
I started Stepmother’s Milk two years ago as therapy for me, and I hoped it would connect me to other stepmoms who, like me, were searching for camaraderie and advice. Sure enough– it worked. My sanity was saved and I met some fantastic women in the process.
Since then, I have watched in amazement as our community has grown. We’re everywhere now! It seems like every day, I discover a new stepmom blog or stepparenting site.
Unlike the generation before us, we’re much more visible and we’re demanding a voice– one that doesn’t apologize or believe that we are dismissible, second-rate mother figures.
This week, Oprah hosted a show called “The Truth About Motherhood.” We’re next.
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