Cha-cha-cha-changes

Blogging is always a tricky endeavor, trying to balance writing in a
way that engages readers into caring about what you are writing about
and to a large degree (even if unacknowledged) yourself as the writer.
Yet, there is always the possibility of going too far, divulging too
much personal information about yourself, your family members, and
others. Yet without those personal details and touches, it's easy to
become too much of an automaton and readers won't and don't connect
with that.

I have at times written personal things only to
delete those posts later when I've felt too vulnerable. I have seen
many bloggers shut down because of the comments left on the blog by
readers and found it ironic that most of the comments that end up
shutting a blogger down are those left by hostile anonymous posters.
This is the difficult part about blogging about things that are so
personal, so potentially life-changing for both the writer and the
reader. How does one write with that personal touch without being too
revealing? My response has been to stop writing the more personal
posts, even though I know those are the ones that tend to create the
most heartfelt reactions.

When I began blogging in 2006, I was
enchanted with the whole idea of blogging. I have long been a journal
keeper, beginning back in the early 1980s when I was 13 years old. I
still have all those journals from my teenage years and they remind me
how far I've come and how much I've grown over the years. I have kept
journals of all the social work jobs I've had and those have been
integral to my own growth as a practictioner and as a future
researcher. Of course, the difference is those have all been private
and my blogging has been public.

I have decided to change the
format of this blog. There is sure to be more tweaking for a while,
until it feels "right" to me. I'll continue to blog but the subject
matter will be broader – about more aspects of child welfare and social
work, not just adoption-focused only. There will be plenty
adoption-related stories, I'm sure – that is the heart of my life and
this blog, after all. To help readers out, I've included the links I
had listed on the former version of this blog on the righthand column
in the "Best of the Blog and Archives" link (at the navigation bar just under the blog banner). I've also kept all those links I had, and they are now in the "Resources and Links" page . I will definitely be continuing to expand this section.