I’m a “reader” or as my husbands says a “book nerd.” I love to read; hard cover books, ibooks, magazines, and most recently blogs. Books/blogs, they suck me in until I’m a part of that author’s life. My recent “blog-following” habit goes pretty much like this.

I stumble around the “bloggersphere” not having a blogger account or any other forum that houses all of my beloved bloggers in one place. Instead, if you strike a nerve in me when I stumble upon your blog, I keep you in my head and whenever an open window strikes, I type your blog into my search bar and catch up on all that I have missed. When I find a new blog, I dive in and read backward, starting from the most recent post, (I know…why not start at the beginning and read to the most recent, it’s my way, don’t knock it!) until I feel that I am adequately caught up in that blogger’s life.

Oh, and now I consider them my new best friend.

This happened to me recently, as in like today. My work and I are not loving each other at the moment and leaving my family every morning to go there is creating a deep threaded anxiety in me that I’m not able to shake lately, at all. Like, I forget it for a second while playing with my 2 boys, 3 1/2 and 5 months, smiling and laughing and then it’s like full force in my brain, in front of my eyes so that I can’t even see clearly. Why let work bother me so much? Because I’m a pleaser and I want to be perfect and right in all things that I do (just ask my husband) and when I can’t fix something I go over and over and over and over (you get the picture) it in my mind, driving me and my husband crazy. ANWAY, another time, another story, but a little window of downtime entered my day this morning so out of my brain I pulled my trusty list of blogs that I like to reunite with every so often.

Some are fashion blogs, travel, parenting, hilarious and sad. Finding a new blog that speaks to you is truly like finding a new best friend. That moment that you read someone’s words, they feel as though they are directed at you…I mean me, I mean you, let’s just say the “reader.” This morning I went through my trusty blog list and felt a little better afterward, nothing spoke to me too deeply but I did find a really cute plaid button-up exactly like something I’ve been wanting for under my new navy puffer vest and out came the credit card and, well, you get the picture.

$32 well spent.

Back to the topic, I didn’t have anything really speak to me this morning but that’s OK so I trudged over to Facebook, my brain yelling at me to get back to work, and completely unexpectedly stumbled upon the Facebook page of a blogger from Omaha, my town, going through breast cancer. The blog “Baby on the Brehm” to be exact.

I read Ashli’s most recent post and was immediately sucked in. A Mom of 3 boys, going through her second round of chemo after being diagnosed with breast cancer just a little over 2 months ago. Oh my god, I thought. How does she speak so openly and with such optimism? I’m have a hard time at work and I’m a total Debbie-downer lately, like seriously, I’m negative-negative-negative lately and I hate myself for it. So I dove into Ashli’s blog and didn’t come up for air for almost an hour. I read her posts all the way back to the first time she tells her readers she has cancer. And that’s where I stopped. Her blog opened up my foggy, cranky, negative eyes and slapped me silly. I was focusing on all the wrong things here, in this office, in my chair. I need to open my eyes and see how lucky I am that this is my “bump in the road” for right now. Ashli, this young 33-year-old mother, fighting for her life, shook me up and made me realize I am nothing but a sissy. And I LOVE her for it. It shook me out of my funk and made me realize that I am lucky to have this hurdle in my life and now I need to go jump it head on. Heck, prove yourself, is what it told me, and I love doing just that. 

So, thank you Ashli, for bringing perspective and faith to me when I thought my “hurdle” was a lot. I don’t mean this to say the struggles that each person goes through aren’t valid unless it’s cancer, I mean cancer is huge, but each person’s struggles also feel huge, just maybe in a different way. What we can all do the same is handle them as best we can and help each other to do so. It may be easier for some than others, it may work out for some and not others. Heck, it might not work out at all BUT you cannot lost sight of doing your best and sometimes it takes a new “best friend” to save you that day.

Today that’s exactly what I found.