They were gone. They were really gone. All 55 blog posts, poof. Vanished. And I just couldn't believe it.
You wouldn't believe all the things I'm feeling right now. A thousand emotions all at once, at the very least!
Yesterday, I had written a new blog post. In itself, it wasn't bad, but it just didn't feel right. I spent the entire day tweaking it, until that evening I realized that at its core, it just wasn't working. It no longer aligned with who I am today and what I'm feeling right now. So, I decided to simply delete the saved draft so I could just write something completely different later on. Except, the moment I made that decision, I happened to be standing at the stove. Because I wanted to mentally let it go as quickly as possible, I thought it would be convenient to just delete the saved draft from my phone. But guess what? After I hit 'delete,' it turned out that it wasn't just that single draft that got deleted, but the entire blog section. Every single post was gone! Empty, empty, empty. When I clicked on a link via a different route, I got the message “This page no longer exists.” Google told me that once a blog section on JouwWeb is deleted, it's impossible to recover.
Panic, grief, and tears. It felt as if a part of me had been wiped away, had passed away. That’s truly how it felt. And maybe it was, after all, I poured my heart and soul into every single blog post. I tried to write every message together with God, letting myself be guided by Him for every word. I wrote what felt right at that moment, what I needed myself for the process that is life, or what someone else needed to read through my pen. I poured everything I had into all 55 of those blog posts. And then they were gone. Just gone, as if they had never existed. Disbelief and sorrow. But also: peace. Strange as it may sound, I felt peace too. As if it was meant to be. No, knowing that it was meant to be. Knowing that God never, ever makes mistakes.
Over the past few days, I’ve truly felt that I want to take a new direction with Making Lemonade. Every little step up to this point has been both necessary and valuable, but just like always, the blog gets to move forward, grow, and walk alongside me. I can feel myself shifting focus toward standing strong and healthy in this world, focusing on daily habits and actions that strengthen and ground me more and more. I realize how much more I want to focus on those healthy actions rather than on the everyday human emotions I experience, like fear, resentment, and anger. I want to build myself up in what gives life, not in what life takes away from me. I was just telling someone about this yesterday, and I felt such a rush of positivity and strength through me that I knew: yes, this is it!
And then, just a few hours later, I accidentally delete all my blog posts. That just couldn't be a coincidence, right? I felt so much grief and mourning (all my writing babies just gone, poof!), but also an invitation to a fresh start. And a lot of confusion, a lot of questions, a lot of "what now?". Do I move forward positively without ever mentioning on the blog that my life used to be completely different? Do I hide that part, or...?
Just a moment ago, I saw that the helpdesk of this website had already answered my panicked question from last night (a huge round of applause for JouwWeb, by the way, helping people out of a jam at 8:00 AM!). Apparently, it is entirely possible to just restore all the blog posts. Whew, whew, whew! I feel so relieved and happy. Not just because many of those posts are important to me, but from what I hear, they are important to others too. I keep hearing from readers how much my writings have helped them, and that is truly wonderful. Everyone needs something different, everyone is helped by something else, and that diversity of both posts and readers seems to be exactly what defines this blog. So, I am glad the posts aren't lost. Just like my "old life," old posts don't need to be erased either. A tree that bears fruit first needed many years to take root and anchor itself firmly into the earth. Those years of growth weren't lost; they were necessary. It’s the same for me, and consequently, for the blog too. But now, now it is time to start bearing fruit and make sure others can pick them!
Will you join me on this new path?
