Finding My Way Back to the Page

I didn't announce that I was leaving social media. There was no dramatic goodbye post. No countdown. No carefully designed graphic explaining that I was "taking some time to focus on myself." I just deleted all the apps. And honestly, I had no idea how long they would stay deleted. Maybe a week. Maybe a month. Certainly never a year.

But for nearly fourteen years, some version of my life has existed publicly. After the 2013 Boston Marathon, there wasn't exactly a gradual introduction to having people know very personal things about me. My injuries, my surgeries, ups and downs of recovery, amputation, family, victories, setbacks. You name it, you can probably find it on the internet about me.

Pretty early on, all of that accidental oversharing became a big part of my career. I became a speaker, wrote a book, started a foundation and social media was the hub. And don't get me wrong, I genuinely enjoyed it.

But last year, I got tired.

So, I stopped showing up online.

And guess what happened?

I still had one of my most successful years speaking. I was able to exhale through what might be our hardest chapter yet (we'll get to that) and somehow, I even I found something I didn't realize I was missing: writing again.

Because writing has been my outlet for as long as I can remember. And after Boston, when I first started journaling publicly about my recovery, it wasn't about building a brand or figuring out some crazy algorithm. I was just trying to make sense of things in the only way I knew how:

by putting words on a page.

All that to say, I guess this is my attempt at doing that again.

Because I'm still trying to make sense of things.

And strangely enough, starting this blog doesn't feel like something new at all. Honestly, it feels like what I've needed to get back to for a long time.

So whether you've been here since the beginning or just stumbled into my little corner of the internet, I'm really glad you did. My hope it that by sharing the vulnerable, messy, funny and sometimes completely ordinary parts of my life, something here might make you feel less alone, help you see something differently, give you a little hope or maybe just laugh on a day when you need it.

And considering everything that has happened in my lifetime and everything still happening now, I don't think I'm in danger of running out of things to write about anytime soon. :)

So here's to getting back to the page, telling the longer version and seeing where it takes us.

This feels like the start of something really good.

Cheers to the messy middle, my friend!

xx,

Rebekah