I Love My Mother-In-Law

A lot of us like to blog. We write about people we know, places we go and experiences that happen at the market (or the thrift store). We share ideas, crafts and recipes, but what happens when we want to share something that isn’t really very nice?

I read such a story written by blogger Catherine Connors. Image found here.

She badmouthed her mother-in-law on her blog Her Bad Mother and her mother-in-law found out.

Scary!

Catherine justifies her experience by sharing the following snippets of information:

Yeah, so. My MIL. She makes me crazy. Like, total-batsh**-pass-the-vodka-where're-mah-pills crazy. I know. I am completely and utterly unique in my experience of my mother-in-law. Everyone else has sweet and adorable mothers-in-law who celebrate them and thank them for loving their children and bearing their grandchildren and who bake them cookies and say things like "Oh, heavens, my darling son/daughter would have been lost -- LOST -- without you" and who also maybe give them money.

Mine says things like, "My, but the baby has a big nose. Not our family nose at all! He must get it from you." And then, just as I'm about to fire off some deliciously outraged retort, this: "How nice! His nose will be distinguished! Not delicate, like Emilia's. Prominent, like yours!"

Or: "Oh, how charming that you have no problem being untidy! It must be so liberating!"

Or: "Oh, how nice that you let Kyle do all the cooking! How lovely for him to get to work on dinner while you hold the baby and do your blog! Is that what you call it? A blog?"

Or: "Oh, you must really be feeding the baby a lot! He's so fat! He won't walk until he's nearly two, I'm sure! But how lovely for you! He'll be SLOW!"

And then she sashays away, her work done.

It this not a great blog post. I love the honestly. Surely, Catherine has the right to vent about this particular life experience, doesn’t she . . . and that’s when it get’s interesting.

Is an experience really just ours to share?

Who has the right to claim it from their perspective?

It’s like when I take a picture of me and my familia at the beach.

For that moment in time, the beach belongs to me. It is my background and my experience.

I don't know what else happened at this tide pool. Maybe some one fell and was hurt here, maybe a lover proposed to the woman of his dreams, maybe a starfish was just born.

Sometimes writing is like that too.

A memory of my childhood or something my son said me before he fell asleep.

I take it in my pocket and use it later to express myself; to say this made me happy or sad or search my soul.

I think that’s what it means to write. It allows someone else to take an experience I had and enjoy or learn or just explore it in some small way. In the same context, I take what other writers have to offer to me too.

So, Catherine Connors, I hope you didn’t get in too much trouble for writing your blog post because sharing your experience made me laugh and think and it sure made me appreciate my mother-in-law that much more.

Linking up to: