Health & Balance

6 Inspiring Female Bloggers

"I let everything out to make sense of my life again."

Mir Kamin, 36
wouldashoulda.com

It wasn't at all where I'd pictured my life going: My nine-year marriage had crashed and burned, leaving me with two small children, one large mortgage, and few recent credits to my résumé beyond the ability to lactate on command.

For a year I'd managed to believe that everything would be okay. Then I lost my crappy, just-for-now job, and the old friend with whom I'd found love said he wasn't sure that he was ready for "all of this." My "Things are getting better" mantra was replaced by "Every time I think that it can't get worse, it does."

I figured I could either spend my evenings cleaning the house or returning to the one pursuit I'd always loved: writing. The laundry piled up and I started a blog. I called it "Woulda Coulda Shoulda," because that seemed to be the recent refrain of my life — if only I'd done this or hadn't done that. I could sink slowly into a pit of doubt and despair, or I could let everything out and maybe make sense of my life again.

I wrote about everything. I wrote about how angry I was that I couldn't find a decent job after spending just three years at home with my kids; I wrote about my hysterectomy and how the hormone patches I wore looked like giant corn pads for the buttocks; I wrote about the funny things my kids said.

The strangest thing happened when I started spilling my guts online: People started hanging around. They'd say, "Hey, me too!" or, "Wow, that was really funny," or, "Hang in there." Lo and behold, I was not, in fact, the only struggling single mother on the planet! I found kindred spirits, an audience, and a support system.

Four years later, I've blogged through half of my son's life. I wrote it all, good and bad: another terrible job, totaling my car, landing my first writing gig, giving my daughter The Talk, the return of the not-ready old friend (who — years later — is now the world's greatest husband and stepdad), and the grand odyssey of blending a family. And — oh, yeah — becoming a professional writer.

It wasn't at all where I'd pictured my life going. Don't tell anyone, but I'm thrilled that I had it wrong. It'll be our little secret; just between you, me, and the Internet.