Specifically, Scary Mommy wrote "2010 in Pictures & Posts" and then invited others to participate in her Year in Review linky. Then Theta Mom picked it up and ran with it, and that's where I took notice. (And now, thanks to my friend Cheryl of Little bit Quirky, I am also connecting to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday New Year link-up, too.)
Me? I am never too proud to
If you're new here? Warning: it's been a pretty intense year with two important deaths and a lot of pain around my son's autism. So if you want light and funny? May I suggest November's post.
Here are some of my favorite Squashed Mom posts from 2010:
January: {This one is easy - I wasn't blogging in January - so nothing!}
February: Imagine that {My first official "Ruminating Ramble" about age and memory and looking ahead and...}
March: Nearly Finished Business {My thoughts on lovingly letting go of my father, preparing for his impending death}
April: From Birth To Death (and the messy stuff in the middle) {The post I took my tag line from; reflections about my sons, sparked by their differing reactions to my father's recent death}
May: From Autist to Artist {This is my "big one" about autism, the one that put my little blog on the map}
June: A Little Respect {My love letter to Jacob's new special needs school that sent their acceptance letter to HIM}
July: Mourning in the Morning {Feeling sad about how my sons are just not getting along any more}
August: Flowers of Late Summer {Reflecting on the bittersweetness at summer's end and looking ahead toward my mother-in-law's passing}
September: Sitting Here in Limbo {What it feels like in the hospital, waiting for my mother-in-law to die}
October: Sometimes it's the little things {Finding and cherishing the little bits of happiness among the sad, the pearls amidst the turds}
November: The Conversationalist {Reporting a hysterical conversation with my son Ethan}
December: The Beauty of Each, Our Every Child {Another "big" post about autism: thinking what might have happened to my son Jacob, were he born in another time and/or place}
and on to 2011 we go....
Now, me being me, I couldn't possibly do this without talking about the process by which I made my selections.
For some of these months the choice was a no-brainer, like May, which held my "famous " post about autism. For others it wasn't easy. Especially for March the month my father died, there were a number of very meaningful posts there.
And then there was that notion of "favorite." Some months had posts which had been specifically linked to by others. While I may have liked these posts, was I being influenced to chose them myself because they had the added shine of having been acknowledged by outside others as being "good"? (And does that matter?)
And then there were months like September... how do I chose between poignant posts about my dead father, about my dying mother-in-law, or a sweet funny one about my autistic son?
In the end, of course the list is somewhat arbitrary, based on how I felt about my posts at the moment I sat down to my computer to write this list. On another day, the list would have a somewhat different configuration, and that's OK, no need to be definitively definitive.
Finally, I would like to thank each and every member of the many intersecting communities who read my blog and whose lives my writing touches.
Many of you are writers yourselves, and this year, my first year of blogging, has been an incredible expansion of my life as I have connected with you. Others of you are my friends in real life, and I so appreciate your support here as well as out there in "the real world."
There are no words to properly say "Thank You" from the depths to which I mean that.
My life has been transformed this year. I lost my father, but found my voice. And life will never be the same.
Here's to another year of community building!
Happy New Year to one and all!
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