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I started blogging 10 years ago today.

My students had long told that I should start one. “You’d love LiveJournal,” they insisted. But I was busy teaching and writing my dissertation, and I couldn’t imagine that I’d have time – or that a blog would be all that interesting.

Then Anthony was diagnosed with cancer, and everything was upended.

I started blogging six months after his diagnosis, when things were starting to become more and more grim. I wrote my first post 4 days after Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed; 9 days before she died. I couldn’t stop thinking about the government’s interventions against her husband’s wishes. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the government did nothing to address poverty or provide universal access to health care, but was willing to swoop in to prevent us from choosing to die with dignity. I couldn’t stop thinking about the battles I might have to fight with Anthony’s fundamentalist family. So I wrote about cancer and dying and the personal as political.

I wrote one blog post. Then another. Then another.

I wrote about things that felt unspeakable. We don’t talk much about dying. We don’t talk much about grief. I wrote for an online community that offered friendship and love and comfort, when there were few people in my offline community that did so.

I’ve written on and off for the past 10 years across different blogging platforms, under a pseudonym and now with my real name attached. I’m thankful for every blog post I’ve written, as I’ve been strengthened by it.

Audrey Watters


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Audrey Watters

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