Happy One-Year "Blogiversary"

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY TO THE DISSIDENT DAUGHTERS BLOG!

Hey, readers. Anne here. It has officially been one year since the Dissident Daughters started blogging. We can hardly believe it. And within that year, we have had a grand total of 49 posts, which averages to almost once a week.

To celebrate our one-year blogiversary, we wanted to write a collaborative post about what the past year of blogging has meant to each of us. Yes, yes, we all know that every one of the daughters can be a bit verbose. Try to read this entry in chunks if it is too much for one sitting. 

Thank you to everyone that has read our blog. We appreciate your engagement, participation, and feedback. Please continue!!! If you ever have any questions- about our posts, our blog, our lives, please don’t hesitate to ask. And if you ever want to comment about our words, I encourage you to do so!!! We love our readers.

Without further ado-

Amy
I cannot believe we have been writing our blog for over a year. The time has gone by so quickly…it seems trite to say and it is so true. Over the past year, our blog has given me several gifts and opportunities.

Although my sisters and I are relatively close, I have discovered and understood more about them through the process of writing this blog together. I have also gotten to know and understand myself better, as I have confronted and clarified my thoughts on subject matter that is important to me. I have had dialogues open between my sisters and friends, in person and online.

I have felt vulnerable with posts I have shared. Writing has been my creative outlet and the opportunity to create and express myself and be vulnerable has been amazing and life changing. I have felt stronger and empowered…which, in my opinion, come along with being vulnerable and authentic.

For the coming year, I wish for us the opportunity to reach more people and develop a dialogue with more readers. I hope we continue to know and love and trust each other. And for myself, I would like to allow myself even more vulnerability…I have a tendency to write on outside subjects and topics I am impassioned about and I enjoy writing and thinking about those things.

At the same time, I would like to share more of myself and my life experiences and how those things have helped me become the person I am today…who I happen to love more every day I get to know her. Even in personal relationships it is easier for me to listen than to speak and I would like to put my personal voice and experience more into play in the coming year. Most of all, I want to continue to create and love and engage and connect.

Thank you all for reading, and thank you, dear sisters, for contributing and committing and remaining engaged and forgiving my delinquent posts and my insecurities and for supporting, loving and encouraging me on a daily basis.

Jill

I can't believe Dissident Daughters has been publishing blogs for a year. Honestly, I almost started crying just thinking about how fast a year can go by. This year, like every other year of my life, has been filled with change,  wonder, amazement, love, and beauty but through all of that, the underlying thread of darkness-my old friend-has been ever present, like a dangerous undercurrent, just wating to pull me under. I feel like I am constantly fighting to stay above water. I have many life boats-my husband (on some days at least- haha), my kids, the Army (as foolish as that sounds), a few good friends, but most of all my sisters, and yes, this little unknown blog.

Over the past year, the blog has been cathartic for me. I have written about things that I have thought for a very long time but had previously sensor ed myself about. Ha, you think. As if I have ever sensored myself. Scary as it may be, though, I have sensored myself, stifled my voice, hidden my soul. As someone who yearns for external validation yet hides behind a cloak that disguises her as a genuine asshole, the blog has been reclvealing to me. I feared many things when it first began. I feared no one would read it. I feared if people did read it they would hate me for my perceived controversial views on life. I feared we would fizzle out. I feared I wouldn't have anything to say. I feared backlash. I feared ridicule. I feared I really was an asshole. None of things have happened much to my surprise. In fact, the only person that has called me an asshole is myself. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that...well, the jury is still out on that but at least no one is openly calling me that other than me, that is. I don't know how many people read our blog. But receiving external validation has started to matter less and less to me. I enjoy learning about the lives of these other women I call my sisters. I didn't know them as well as I thought and at the same time I knew them better than I thought. Sometimes I'm in awe as to how our shared experience produced such wildly different lives that are still yet very similar.

I don't know what my future holds. I never do, really, no one does. But what I do know is that the blog has taught me that through it all, lessons will be learned, assholes will be made, strength will be gathered from likely and unlikely sources, fear will be dissipated, and love will be ever-present, even through the very darkest of times. Thank you to my dear sisters who have taught me about myself, allowed me the freedom to express my feelings, and shared the richness of their thoughts with me through this blog. There is no greater act of love than that. I love you guys.

Molly

I think I already said this in a previous blog post, but I’ll say it again.  For me, the past year of being part of the Dissident Daughters blog has been like one of us sharing our not-so-personal diary with each other every week. Even though we as sisters communicate multiple times daily through one mode or another between our group texts, email, Facebook, and Snapchat, each week I look forward to reading something more substantial from one of the four most important people in my life. It’s amusing because often the blogger does not think she has anything to write about, not realizing that for me (maybe not for our entire audience), it’s entertaining just to read about what may seem like the more mundane details of our everyday lives. However, I do not want to give the impression that our blogs simply detail our boring lives.  It obviously means much more than that. If I really wanted to slipshod this post, I’d simply sum it up right here and say that what the blog has done for me over the past year is solidify our sisterly bond. Ah, how cheap. What is a sisterly bond anyway? So many people talk about it but there is no book definition. Ultimately, I think it’s an energy you feel but people have tried to define it using quotes…

One quote I have about the sisterly bond includes the line, “She’s the one singing your song when you need to hear it most.” I can’t tell you how many times I have read one of my sister’s blogs and thought, “Wow, she nailed it. I feel/have felt the exact same way. I’m glad she sang that song today because I really needed it.” Or some days, I will be having a shitty Monday and just reading one of my sister’s blogs makes me feel connected and grounded. It’s weird and hard to explain but I often feel stronger after reading the blog for that week. It’s as if seeing and reading one of my sister’s thoughts makes me feel like they are not so far away.

I also have a quote about the bond between sisters that says, “A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.” I have also felt this connection to childhood over the past year with the blog in a couple different ways. First, often we blog about our times together (my bachelor party and Christmas time) and our stories are so ridiculous that one may think s/he was reading about a couple of high school friends, not “grown up” adult women. The second way in which I have felt the connection to our childhood not being lost, is that I think the blog has brought out the vulnerability in all of us. Not that being vulnerable is childish by any means (I actually think it is a sign of intelligence and being evolved) but we often associate being vulnerable with childhood. We’ve heard Amy discuss grieving her loss of a romantic partner, Jill talk about her struggles as a parent, Anne convey her concerns about how to be “strong,” Kristen communicate her fears about transitioning from college, etc, etc, etc. I could go on and on with examples of all of us laying out our vulnerability. In fact, I just scrolled through almost all of the old blogs trying to find examples and teared up at how beautiful it is to be vulnerable with each other. If you have paid attention to my previous blog posts, you already know my thoughts on vulnerability. Maybe that is part of what is behind the mysterious sisterly bond?

Anne

One year of blogging! I can hardly believe it! Honestly, it seems like just yesterday that I was struggling with the mechanics of trying to put this blog together. (Definitely not an easy task for someone with little website and design knowledge!)

What has this year of blogging meant to me? Ultimately, it has been a means of continuing to honor and expand the relationship I have with my sisters. I love reading their thoughts and feelings in their own voices; reading one of their entries always helps me feel as though I grow closer to them. Additionally, I always learn something new- I think about an issue from a different angle, and I also learn about yet another layer in their personhood.

It’s not always simple. Yes, one of the advantages of writing a blog with 4 other people is that you are not tasked with writing a post every week.  And yet writing with 4 other people means that you have to coordinate and collaborate. There are some weeks where one of us did not plan enough time our schedule to write a post, and we have to quickly decide if someone else will post, or if we will have to skip a week. We also have to coordinate promoting on Facebook, realizing that some days it is easier and more difficult than others. And even this post- we have to each submit paragraphs, and then I edit it into one posted entry. There are certainly challenges amongst the joy and delight of reading each other’s words.

But all of this- both the beauty and challenges of writing a blog together- it’s what being in relationship with one another is about. And I love it because ultimately, this entire project helps us to grow closer to one another. Coordinating and collaborating helps us to know how to advocate, compromise, discuss, laugh, and grow together. And this process ultimately enhances and deepens our relationship. It’s honest, it’s real, it’s fun, it’s work. And that, my friends, is love.

Additionally, I love that this sister’s project is one in which we are able to create and connect in the world. There have been several instances in which someone told one of the sisters how much a particular entry resonated with him or her. I want that; I want that connection. I want someone to read our blog, and to think, “Oh, really, you feel that way too?!?!” It validates and affirms us as human beings.  However, in addition to validation, I also want growth and challenge. I want our entries to challenge people to think differently, and I also want others to help me think differently. I wrote about this in a different collaborative post, (see here), but I don’t think that any of us are the sole arbitrators of truth. Deep wisdom is found in a plurality and diversity of voices, and this blog is a means of working toward that. All of our voices are important to that end- the four sisters, our contributing writers, and of course, our readers. 

Overall, thanks to my beautiful sisters and to our amazing readers for the fantastic year. Here’s to many more!

Kristen

My four beautiful sisters are people who have had a significant amount of influence in my life. As I reflect on this past year, I am so grateful that the five of us started our Dissident Daughters blog because it is symbolic of our impeccable bonds and love for each other and a reminder of just how different, yet so much alike we are. One thing the continuation of our blog has made me realize is just how much each and every one of us has grown over the past year. The content of our posts change with the circumstances of our lives and it is beautiful to see the accomplishments, goals, fears, and lessons that we have each undergone.

For myself, the blog has also allowed me to see how I have grown as a writer. At the start of the blog, it was challenging for me to separate my academic writing style from a more leisure, talkative writing style. I always felt pressure to try and sound intelligent and intellectual, which in turn, I believe crippled my writing style. Now, I am more comfortable with writing exactly what I am thinking and feeling and I believe that has actually enhanced the quality of my blog writing.

Our blog has also allowed me to get to know my sisters even better. We are all really close and comfortable with each other, but some of the topics discussed in our blog may not be topics that come up when we are all together or in an everyday conversation. For example, I had no idea how much of an impact Jill’s overseas experience in the military had on her (see “Crazy Bitch” blog post), or at least she was never able to quite explain it to me in words. I think that the blog has been good for all of us because it has allowed us to reveal our feelings, concerns, fears, etc. with our readers and each other without anyone present to critique us in the flesh. Sometimes I think that it is easier to write about our thoughts, feelings, etc. because we have time to think about exactly what we are going to say and do not have to worry about looking stupid in front of someone because at the end of the day, you’re talking to a piece of paper in a sense.

Sometimes the blog can be stressful when it’s your time in the lineup to write because you either have nothing to talk about or too many things to talk about. It is in these times, that I think my posts are the most authentic and genuine because I simply start writing and just go with what comes to my mind and heart. This allows me to discover feelings, thoughts or ideas that I may not have even realized I was having.

So, whether our blog reaches 50 people or 500 people, the blog is significant to my sisters and I because it is a symbol of us. We are glad to share our thoughts with the world and we hope that we can challenge and stimulate the minds of every single reader, but most importantly we hope to keep growing and learning more about ourselves and each other. So cheers to our one year anniversary, Dissident Daughters, and to many more years to come.