Glitches and Self-Worth.

I have had a mailchimp signup for years, but my self-doubt and thoughts that nobody wants to actually hear from me has consistently prohibited me from sharing my writings or posts. Oh, people who want to read will find out, will come, but I felt people would find me if they wanted to.  It is funny, because I manage social media for clients and volunteer work and have no issue promoting their work, because it is not personal about me. I know a lot of us, especially those of us that have taken on caregiving of our children for many years of their lives, diminish our own contributions and values in our minds and in the work we do. I recently counted up the volunteer hours in the past 5 years for one single organization, and the value of time was in the hundreds of thousands of hourly wage value. That is just ONE organization. Throughout that time, I rarely promoted the fact that I was volunteering thousands of hours per year, or, that I was doing important work to support others. Parenting is like that. We work work work work so hard but don't feel we deserve acknowledgement or recognition because that type of work is undervalued. Why am I telling you all this? Because I finally decided to use mailchimp and send out reminders to my subscribers, and to focus on posting more consistently to here and substack/medium. To create discussions and essays on things that are important to me. I updated and typed and worked and went through the process of using a new mailchimp feature I have not used before, and clicked begin, and the RSS feed didn't work properly. I noticed immediately that the link to the blog post was not in the mailchimp notification to my subscribers, but I thought nobody is going to read it, so I won't even bother sending another update. I didn't want to bother anyone.  I did get several unsubscribes immediately, and my imposter syndrome me said, see? Nobody wants to hear from you. One single person emailed me and said what link? Where is the blog post? THANK YOU for acknowledging me, and seeing me out here in your sea of inbox messages. That one small error made me completely reverse from happily starting to utilize the mailchimp that people actually signed up for, to doubting the value of communicating with folks or putting any more emails in the inbox. 

That small error and the subsequent anxiety from that error made me think about how much of our lives we spend diminishing our own work. We, meaning caregivers. Often parents who put their needs in the backseat for years to care for their children. Often moms, or people who identify as the mothers in the family dynamic, especially. We do spend thousands of hours per year serving others - our others - and society does not really value of the work we do. It is not only physical work, it is also emotional work.  So, when we also attempt to talk about the work we do, share our input in our homes and lives and communities, it is often done in a minimizing way. Nobody likes braggers, but self-promotion even in a sharing and community oriented platform can feel weird. Even if we are not selling anything. 

So, this is all to say I messed up the mailchimp on the blast yesterday - sorry. I know some folks have been subscribed for ages, and I have never sent anything out to your inbox. So, hello, I am Denise, and I like to write about permaculture, gardening, growing, making food and herbal products for my family, canning and preserving, baking, herbal health, plant conservation, solar power, chickens, homestead living, homeschooling/unschooling, parenting, books, handmade things, and more.  I have been working on a book and garden designs and things, and wanted to start publishing here in this space more often and sharing more again. I apologize for the blankish email yesterday, but now I got it figured out. Now, I just need to see the value in what I share to other people, and continue to work to connect and build this community. Working on it.