"Eww My Mom Has a Facebook!" :)

This post is #132 in a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Ten years ago today, Hannah and I sat down together at our big desktop computer and she helped me set up my Facebook page.  And she also wrote the very first post on my page ...

It still makes me smile today.  :)

Even though Facebook would probably have been a more efficient way to send out our now nearly daily updates, we chose to continue with the emails.  It was important to me to protect Hannah's privacy and dignity as much as possible while still communicating with those who followed her story and Facebook just felt a little too "public" to me.  Facebook was still relatively new at that time (at least it was to me!) and it just didn't seem to be the proper venue for sharing Hannah's story.

We discussed setting up a CaringBridge site, but Hannah was adamant that she did not want that.  She was of the opinion that CaringBridge was for people who were dying, and she did not see herself in that group.  Explaining to her that CaringBridge was definitely NOT just for people who were dying did no good ... she wanted nothing to do with it.  

So the emails continued.  By this time, those emails were going out to literally thousands of people around the world as they were forwarded by those who received them, who then forwarded them to others, who then forwarded them to others ... so I'm not sure it was actually any more private than any other platform ... but it felt that way.

I'm so thankful now that we did these emails.  They were cathartic for me to write, and I believe they chronicled our journey better than any other method would have.  And I'm so thankful for those thousands of people who read them and prayed for us along the way.