My blog.

To my awesome, beautiful, fun loving "fans" who read my blog,

As many of you know, I treat my blog like a diary. This writing blog is a way for me to not only show my fellow writing friends, as well as potential agents, editors, etc, my voice as a writer, but also for me to blog about all of my thoughts, feelings, worries, jokes, observations, etc etc etc...

So, in a nutshell, my writing blog is like my journal, of sorts.

So when I write about my insecurities as a mother, I'm not looking for attention or reassurance, per say. I'm just looking for listening ears (or reading eyes). I'm looking for someone out there who might feel the same way that I feel. Someone who might be insecure about their abilities as well. Someone who wonders whether or not they will be capable of caring for their child efficiently. Someone who wonders why they were chosen to parent the special spirits that are under their care.

And when I blog about having a mouse in my house and wanting to freak out so bad that I break the windows with my screams...I am looking for someone to tell me that they feel the same way. Someone who tells me that they've had a mouse in their house, too, and that it made them go ape sh**, as well.

When I blog about judgmental whores in Safeway that roll their eyes when I am walking around with my screaming special needs two year old, I am looking for someone to laugh with me. Someone who will understand why I felt so judged and horrible. Someone who has been in the same situation.

And when I blog about feeling insecure about going to church where the women have perfect nails and perfect hair and perfect everything...and I feel like I am a square peg in a round hole, I am just looking for someone who understands. Someone to tell me that I am not as much of the "black sheep" as I feel. Someone to tell me that it is OKAY to be different, and that it is OKAY to be me. I'm not, in any way shape or form, trying to cause problems. I am not specifically referring to any one person at all. I am referring to how out of place I feel. How self-conscious I am when I go to church. How much I need to get over my inscurities because I am not as pretty or thin or talented or pulled together at the other women. How THEY seem like Stepford Wives while I feel like Wednesday Adams.

I'm not looking for trouble. I'm not bad mouthing people. I am doing what I do best: Talking about a situation bringing me angst, and making it into a funny, sardonic (thanks for the word, Tanya! :) ), sarcastic way of looking at my life through the tears in my eye. If I wanted to direct it at one person specifically....believe me, I would. But I don't. Because I don't want to. I don't hate anyone I go to church with. If anything, I wish I could be more like them. I WISH I had it all together. I WISH I looked as great as they did.

But, instead.....I'm me. I'm flawed. And imperfect. And I need an attitude adjustment at times. And I need a swift kick in the a** sometimes. And I need a hug sometimes. And I need someone to tell me that I am okay the way that I am. And I need someone to tell me that I need to shut up sometimes. And I need someone to tell me that being different from everyone else is okay, and that I'm not a damn alien!

I don't blog to stab someone in the back. If I wanted to insult someone, you can believe I'd do it to their face. Anyone who's had the privilage (or curse) to know me for the past 34 years knows that I will say it. If I hate you, I'll say it. If I love you, I'll say that, too. But if I don't say....and if I blog about feeling like an outsider looking in....don't take it as an insult. Don't whisper, and pass it along, and turn MY LIFE into a session of that old grade-school game of "Telephone"! (remember? You whisper one thing to one person in a circle, and when it comes back to you, it's completely twisted and mangled into a sentence "resembling" the original?) This is my life. And right now, I need the gospel like I need water. I need to cling to the church like a floating log in raging river that is my life right now! When my words are twisted, and misinterpreted, and misconstrued...it hurts. It makes going into my Sunday School and Relief Society meetings that much more difficult! If you are concerned that I am referring to you in one of my blogs...ask me. Don't whisper to the next person, who will whisper to the next person, who will...you get the drift. Just ask me.

I might not be the smartest, best looking, or most talented person in the world...but I am nothing if I am not honest.

I blog because I want to be a writer. And when I write, I take the things that are going on in my own life, and turn them into something funny, or something interesting, or something emotional, or something just plain interesting to read. I don't write to hurt people. I don't write to cut people down. I write to get some of my own hurt out. I write to cut myself down and make a few people laugh. I write because instead of lashing out at the people I love, and instead of doing shop therapy, and instead of EATING...I am getting it out. It's theraputic for me.

I just want the readers of my blog to understand why I blog. I think that I am about at the the end of my rope with being misunderstood. I am absolutely done with losing friends because of misunderstandings.

I hope this will end said misunderstandings once and for all.

Brooke Moss.

P.S. It is important to me that I add: When I blogged about feeling different and like I didn't fit in at church, I got over 15 emails (FIFTEEN) from friends and readers who could relate to my plight. Women who feel like they have to change in order to fit in, women who don't feel as thin and pretty as the women they go to church with, women who feel like they need to change in order to fit the mold. And, unfortunately, I also got into trouble with some of my friends who thought I was insulting them, who heard through a "friend" of a "friend" that I'd been specifying THEM in my blog.

It is important to me that people who read my blog are able to make the distinction between a general blog and cutting remarks made towards someone specific. Anyone who knows me, knows that if I wanted to insult someone: I would.  I am not afraid to tell someone how I feel. So if I wanted my whiney blog about how insecure I feel at church to be directed at someone specific...then I would have said so. Period. But I didn't. Period.

Isn't it better that I reached 15 different women who feel the same way? Isn't it more important that I wrote something that made fifteen women stop and say, "Oh my gosh, I felt the same way!" Isn't it more important that by my going to church every week, and getting over MY insecurities, I've inspired 15 women to try and do the same? 


Isn't that more important than calling someone, who whispers to someone, who tattles to someone that I am saying hurtful things about people? Doesn't it make more sense to reach out to people through the written word to find common ground...than to manipulate my words into yet another situation that perpetuates and already ridiculous misunderstanding??


To those women who saw a piece of themselves in my blog about feeling out of place at church: I feel you, I hear you, and I am here for you. That is why I write what I write, when I write it. To reach out to women who might feel out of synch, out of place, or out of order. For no other reason than that. 


I was taking something I am struggling with, and turning it into an invitation for dialogue. Please.... I beg of you....never use my words to hurt someone else. If I wanted them to hurt, I would do it myself. And frankly put, I didn't want them to hurt. I never did! Period. 


P.S. Here is a link to the blog in question, in case anyone would like to refresh their memory. Read it, and then read it again...then let me know where in that blog I specifically insult someone or anyone by name:  http://brookemosswriter.blogspot.com/2010/10/whine-fest.html