Hi friends! Happy spring! Welcome to April. I guess we’re more than halfway through April now, but when I first started writing this it was still March, and apparently I unrealistically expected to publish this early in April.

Sorry for the radio silence around here. I don’t even know what that means, radio silence. It’s an expression, but radios aren’t silent so where did it even come from?

Okay. I looked it up. Literally it is absence of radio transmission. As an expression, it’s a period during which you don’t hear anything from a normally talkative or communicative person or group. So it’s true, radios aren’t normally silent. That’s the point.

Alright. So sorry for the radio silence around here. Although am I still a “normally communicative” blogger when last year I only published six posts? My frequency of posts has definitely decreased since the first few years of this blog. I don’t really know why quite honestly. I think mostly life has just gotten messier. I blog a lot in my head, and I start writing a lot of posts, but it feels harder to put together a coherent summary of things than it used to. Maybe I just have less energy than I used to.

I definitely have less energy than I used to.

And then like, do people even blog anymore? Do people still read blogs? A lot of people seem to “micro-blog” on Instagram but I don’t want my personal Instagram to be public. And I don’t want to have two sort of personal Instagram accounts.

I don’t know. I have things I want to say still and I still want to connect with the people who relate to the things that I want to say but I guess even when I do know how to say what I want to say I don’t know where to say it so then I just don’t say it.

But I’ve been reminded on a few occasions recently that saying things can be important.

Two friends this year, while telling me about challenging situations they were going through, have told me, “but I could hear your voice in my head saying…” followed by something I’d said to them at some point in time over the years. It’s a cool thing, knowing that even when you’re not with someone, you can still be there with them, simply because of words you shared with them in the past.

And then. I was tagged in a comment on Instagram, on a post of someone I didn’t know. This person was about to undergo a procedure they were nervous about, and my friend Lindsay was sharing words I had shared with her before she had undergone a major “this might help but it might not but even if it helps it’s still going to be far from perfect” surgery.

But it wasn’t just that Lindsay had remembered what I had told her. I learned that she had actually written what I had said down on a piece of paper and looked at it all the time before her surgery. Learning that really touched me. It actually made me tear up a little bit. My words had helped her, been there for her, encouraged her through a scary decision.

Words. They matter. They have power. And yes of course, as with any form of power, words can hurt. But words can also help. Words can heal. Words can connect.

Words matter. Saying things matters. And Lindsay reminded me of that.

I want to start saying things again. I want to keep saying things. No, I’m not exactly sure where and when and to whom and how much; these are things I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few months, and I still need to do some more figuring out. But what I have figured out is that I do want to keep saying things.

And so. I’m going to start right now and say some things right here. In fact, I’m going to say what I said to my friend before her surgery, that she then told her friend. It’s what I’ve said to other friends before big decisions. The reason I started saying it to anyone at all is because it’s something I’ve said to myself on more than one occasion. Here it is:

It’s always going to be hard. But maybe it doesn’t need to be this hard. And you’re worth that chance.

We’ve all got our problems. Like our big problems, not our “my hair straightener stopped working” or “the grocery store didn’t have the cereal I wanted” problems. I’m talking the big, life altering problems. We’ve all got them.

It’s really easy to get stuck in one of these problems. Life hands you something you don’t want to deal with but you have no choice so you just learn to live with it. You deal. And when over time the problem gets worse and worse you just keep dealing.

And sure, sometimes possible solutions come along, but all the solutions are accompanied by their own potential problems. And you’ve been dealing with this problem so long that you don’t even remember what life was like outside of it. Plus, you’re used to this problem and surely that’s easier than adjusting to the new problems that could come along with the solutions.

We get stuck. And we let ourselves just be stuck sometimes because getting unstuck is scary and unknown and overwhelming. And hard work. And because we minimize just how hard things are, just how hard the work already is. And, because we invalidate our big problem by comparing them to the big problems that other people are dealing with.

Life is just hard sometimes. We all know that.

But what if it doesn’t need to be this hard? What if there’s an easier way? What if in and amongst the unknown and overwhelming is a chance for a life that ends up being a little less hard?

A chance.

I just wanted to come here and say that you are worth that chance. There are many reasons not to take that chance, many valid reasons, just please do not let your perceived self-worth be one of them. And do not use someone else’s big problem to trivialize your own. When there is a chance, you are worthy of it.  

So yeah. Those are the things that I came here to say to you today.

Also hello, long time no see.

Hopefully see you for more saying things soon.

Okay now bye.