Blogs are the People and Good Housekeeping mags for today’s moms.
Think about it.
When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s my mother always had a magazine in her purse. Sure, she read a ton of books, but for waiting in doctor’s offices or hair appointments, it was People, Woman’s Day, or, in tough times – The Enquirer. To relax her mind for a few minutes here and there, she’d flip through the pages, look at the celebrity pics, and perhaps read an article or two. Sometimes one of those articles would stick with her long after reading it.
Flash forward to 2015. Step into any pediatrician’s office, and I challenge you to not find a mom staring at her phone. She’s perusing Facebook or Twitter, checking out friends’ pics and clicking on articles of interest that will redirect her to blog posts. Some of the posts are funny, some meaningful, but chances are, if the nurse calls her child’s name before she finishes reading the article, she won’t go back to it. She doesn’t have a dog-eared page to fold down at the corner. She’ll stick her phone in her purse or pocket and retrieve it after the appointment when she has to send a text or make a call. By that time, there are six hundred more Facebook posts and a thousand more tweets that she’ll want to scroll through. Unless the pre-appointment article was really thought-provoking, said mom will have forgotten about it.
Bloggers have to be relevant and smart to keep readers coming back. Being funny helps too. My top three favorite blogs are all of these. I read them to relax or when I have a few free minutes – like in a doctor’s waiting room. I share their posts often.
The first blog is Playdates on Fridays, written by Whitney Fleming. Whitney posts mostly about parenting, sometimes about current events and how they relate to the average family in today’s world. Her posts always speak to me and sometimes move me to tears. Mostly though, I laugh a lot, feel good about my parenting, and get some great ideas from her articles.
Check out Whitney’s blog at www.playdatesonfridays.com
The second blog I want to share is Scary Mommy. Scary Mommy has several contributing writers whose posts are mainly about motherhood, womanhood, and even pregnancy. The homepage is awesome, because it has the pages listed at the top, and they are easy to navigate. There’s a page dedicated to travel, one on pregnancy, and even one where moms can submit their (humorous) confessions, i.e. – I dumped my glass of ice cold water on my three-year old’s head at dinner so that she’d stop whining. (I did, but that’s a story for another post.) What I love about Scary Mommy is that while you can peruse the site and become informed in many aspects of mommyhood, so many of the articles are just hilarious. I always get a good laugh at the mom humor articles.
The site is www.scarymommy.com
Last is The Bloggess. This was really the first blog I ever read consistently. Jenny Lawson, the author of The Bloggess, is simply a crack up. I first read her memoir Let’s Pretend This Never Happened a few years ago and began reading her blog shortly after that. Jenny writes a lot about mental health. She suffers from social anxiety disorder and depression but handles it in a uniquely funny way that gives her readers hope and an opportunity to laugh at themselves and her. Her posts are about everything from pop culture to family to taxidermy. Her father was a taxidermist, and her stories about his quirky lifestyle and her childhood experiences will have your rolling. Several of these anecdotes are on her blog in the archives, but the ones in Let’s Pretend This Never Happened are gut-busting. She also has a new book out that’s called Furiously Happy. If you’ve had a rough day, open up The Bloggess, and just let yourself laugh.
Go to www.thebloggess.com
Happy blog reading, peeps. Ping me if you find something you like on one of these sites. I’d love to share it!