If you regularly follow my blog, you know that I have not been contributing regularly to it for several months. I’ve thought about writing many times over the last little while, but my emotions were too raw to expose to the world. I have been withdrawn and unsharing, but I think I am ready to return to the wonderful world of blogging.

I started out a little over a year ago blogging about relationships, and my voice quickly evolved to be more personal and less of a discussion about relationships in general. This made it very difficult for me to write about anything while I was dealing with a loved one’s terminal illness and subsequent death. So many topics came to mind and I had very good intentions (and we all know where that leads), but as I said before, it was just too personal and close to home to share.

One thing that really stuck out in my mind is how a set of siblings can share the same biological parents, yet have experienced such different parenting from those same parents. Birth order has a lot to do with this, as does gender. My parents were of this liberated time and there was no real apparent gender bias to their parenting styles, yet our society still dictates that male and female children be raised differently.

I am the oldest of five, and I was very aware of the difference in parenting between children in the same family. I was still surprised at some of the attitudes of my siblings while dealing with the death of our mother. I also saw more clearly the role that my parents played in my life. Being the oldest, I was shocked to learn that there were so many things about my parents that I knew that none of my siblings had any idea about. My oldest brother kept asking me “How do you know that” or “How do you remember that”?

Our parents treat us differently based on our personalities as well. This became very apparent as my siblings and I discussed our mother or when we were going through her personal items to split up. I was surprised at things that held sentimental value to someone, but was pretty meaningless to me, or vice versa.  A lot of this had to do with what activities we engaged in with our parents and it the experiences that we had with them.

Well, I guess that’s a good start to getting back into the groove of writing. I have been thinking a lot about this topic and may return to it in the future, as there a lot of unformed idea about this rattling around in my head. I hope you enjoy the new look of the blog and I hope you will check out my new project when I have it up and running. I am in the process of creating a new website where I will be selling jewelry that I have made. I have tons of stuff, as I have found this very theraputic (you were bang on with that one KL!).  Have a great day and I hope to be posting again soon!