Touching base & letting you in on a few secrets

Hi friends. This isn’t going to be the profoundest of posts. I guess I’m getting to a place where I’m trying to be comfortable with writing even when I know I won’t be able to say what I want to say.

Writing’s good like that anyway – even on the least inspired of days it’s good for the soul to put “pen to paper”.

Yellow’s also good like that. It’s just a bit happy. Like these yellow roses that I went and bought myself a week or two ago. Aren’t they just happy? You’ll probably see me using a lot of yellow for a while (I can’t get enough of it) so I hope you like it.

I’m still grieving and healing from the loss of our baby and I’m trying to blend my external world with my interior life. Earlier this week I went to publish a post that I’d written about simple ways to practice Earth Day everyday (and how to include your kids), and then as I was about to hit “post” a wave of sadness came. Suddenly it felt so silly to be publishing something like that when I had just lost a child. I buried it in a folder somewhere and haven’t posted anything since.

See? I’m struggling to know what to say here in this space.

Really, I just wanted you to know a few things for the time being:

I’m working on a redesign of the blog. This means that I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of hours on 248 different headers (exaggeration, maybe, but that’s what it feels like) and I still haven’t landed where I want to be. I have a bit of an eye for design but I lack the skill level to match it. Couple that with a severe case of perfectionism and very little time to work and you have a recipe for disaster. Whereas the process was invigorating when I began a few weeks ago (so good to have something creative to pour myself into as I was grieving), now I’m just frustrated. In any case, I’ll do my best and we’ll launch on May 1st – with or without my dream look and feel in the design.

My domain will soon change to AdrielBooker.com. (I know, you’re clicking over now – don’t get excited, you’ll just see a message about how you’re not allowed in yet.) For years I’ve loathed the name Mommyhood Memos and felt like it didn’t represent me well, and for the last two years I’ve tried to think of something better but continually draw a blank – not because I couldn’t think of other names that I liked, but mostly because I wondered if they’d still suit me five years from now. (Do you know what a pain in the bum changing domains is? I’ve had over 50,000 pins from the Memos and I’m pretty sure it means I will lose all of those potential visitors. Kinda sad and feels like a lot of wasted hard work.) Anyway, my name is not going to change, so AdrielBooker.com it will be.

Merging all of my writing into one place. Part of the reason I’m creating AdrielBooker.com is so that I can channel all of my writing there, instead of having multiple blogs. If you followed Click Clink Five (my wee little unedited blog that’s been severely neglected in the last six months) you’ll know a whole different side of me. That one will be imported to the new site and the old domain will be let go. I plan to continue writing about motherhood and parenting, but need a space that better represents all of who I am.

Facebook dramas. In relaunching my site and changing the domain to AdrielBooker.com I also want to change my facebook page to match. Apparently with too many fans/followers it’s not that simple and so I may have to phase out the old page and launch a brand new one instead. This makes me cranky and again feels like lots of work and time down the drain. I’ll keep you posted, but for now, the Memos on facebook is still going strong right where she’s at. (I really love the community of women who gather there.)

Rebranding Bloggers for Birth Kits to the Love a Mama Community. Since we’ve put our hand to a few more maternal health projects since Bloggers for Birth Kits started (like Project Baby Bilum and the Umi Slings), I decided it was time for an umbrella for all the projects to fall under. B4BK won’t go away, it will just come under Love A Mama now. So, with the launch of my revamped blog will also be the launch of the Love A Mama Community. This will be where all of our maternal health projects are driven from.

And how about a sneak peak of the Sunshine Project? This year for my Mothers Day Drive I’m not going to be focusing on collecting clean birth kits. Although I’m still accepting birth kits, that campaign has a life of its own now and we have a steady flow of kits coming in without my having to do much of anything {smile}. Instead I’m going to introduce the Sunshine Project – bringing light into delivery rooms. This will be an effort to raise money for a solar suitcase developed originally for maternal health in Nigeria where death rates for mothers and infants is also a serious problem. These solar-powered maternal health suitcases designed by We Care Solar enable care givers to have light in otherwise dark places (i.e. bamboo huts without electricity, clinics where power frequently goes out, etc.). Can you imagine having someone performing an emergency c-section or trying to stop a woman’s hemorrhaging only to have the power switch off forcing them to try and continue by light of a cell phone or candle? Sadly, these scenarios are not that far-fetched. The Sunshine Project will be launching in a few days to help address this critical need. I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it and help mobilize your mama-friends to make a difference this Mothers Day.

And personally? I head toward Mothers Day this year with a sense of trembling, not knowing how I’ll respond in my season of grieving. As hard as it is, knowing that I have something to pour myself into that will bless other moms who lack vital resources spurs a quiet joy in my heart. I sure hope you’ll join me in promoting and supporting the Sunshine Project this year. Let’s love some mamas together. More details to come about the project later this week.

And I have a really happy note to leave you with today. I wanted to show you some photos of what you’ve done this last year. This is the midwife backpack that’s being loaded up on our ship right now, ready to sail this Wednesday to Papua New Guinea. You can see that it’s full of antenatal education tools, as well as tools to aid in safe delivery – all packed into a backpack that is manageable for any midwife to wear as she treks through mud into villages in the remote that areas our Medical Ship enters. Among many other things our donations supported this year, this backpack (and two others like it) were provided by you. Thank you Love A Mama Community for getting behind the beautiful women of PNG. You are making a difference.

Dear friends, I know for a fact that so many of you are lurkers here (in the best possible sense) and I have no idea who you are. That’s ok, you can read silently. But I’d love to know who you are and if you’ll follow me to my new site through all of the changes on the horizon. What do you hope for in the future of this online space and community? I’d really love meet you and to hear your feedback. (Of course it goes without saying that I’d love to hear from the rest of you non-lurking types too.)

Love,
A