I can't win...

OK, so apparently my free sharing has prompted many well-wishers to feel that they need to walk on egg shells in response to me. Ugh. I should just keep my mouth shut. No! I think my request to not embellish our story is entirely reasonable. I post here for a specific reason -- so that any and all who care about us and our story can come here and get it from the horse's mouth 24/7.

So, if you are wondering if you did something I find offensive, just ask yourself this question: If and when you passed on information about our family, was it information you personally read on this blog, read in an e-mail from Derek or I, or heard from one of our mouths? If the answer is no, that means you heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who... you get the idea.

How can you ensure the accuracy of something you heard from a third party? And if you know that the answer to that is that you can't, well, why on earth would you pass it on unless you just don't care about whether the words that come out of your mouth are true or not???

Please, I implore you, pass on this web address to others and encourage them to visit. Pass on what you read here if you trust yourself to repeat with accuracy. Encourage people to contact us and call on us yourself! But, for Pete's sake, please don't propagate the damage of those who find it interesting to tweak details by repeating info received from third parties. Oh, and why not apply this universally? It's not just a good idea in this situation, but in life.

And as far as my comments about focusing more on my health than my loss, well, I don't want anyone to think that there is some special formula for how I expect to be treated or that I spend any time analyzing it when you go. I don't. I think I was overly sensitive in the situation mentioned for other reasons... And I was probably wrong, so please disregard that gibberish.

My point is, I have received an onslaught of e-mails from people expressing that they are afraid to say something wrong, and that just breaks my heart. People: just be real! And if that means you say "I have no idea what to say," or even that you have to avoid me for a while because you are so uncomfortable, then that's fine. As I told you before, you are dealing with the Queen of Awkward when it comes to grieving people... I have never known what to say and generally don't say anything at all. And it's never been because I didn't care - I was just inexperienced. So, again, I get it. No sweat. Please do keep in touch.

Whew! I am worn out... I feel emotionally drained from this day. The last thing I desire is to offend anyone or make anyone feel uncomfortable about talking to us in this time. But I also (as many of you know) don't apologize for my convictions and I don't like feeling as though deciding to open up this blog to all who know us was a mistake. I am GLAD I decided to pass on this long-time blog to people in our local community, even though it had originally been for keeping in touch with people who we had left behind in places we'd moved away from. I started to feel great regret about that decision when the dominant gossip culture of this small town started to rear it's ugly head, and I wanted to pull the blog. I have decided not to, and to rather handle the situation with the same strategy which I find most successful in all difficult circumstances: full disclosure and honesty.

So there you have it... I abhor gossip and do not tolerate it in my life. By blogging here, I realize that I open myself up to circumstances I cannot control. If anyone chooses to embellish and/or wag without verifying what they have heard, then I have to suck it up. And I will. But I couldn't, in good faith, go on without disclosing how I feel about gossip. Perhaps I do so with hope that I can influence just one avid story-lover to desire truth above drama.

Yah, not holding my breath on that one! But I do hope...

PS - Please do not ask me to tell you the story of what offended me. That would be asking me to gossip and I ain't gonna do it!
It is sufficient to say that I was offended by the pervasive culture in this small town of people talking as if they are authorities about things they have no first-hand knowledge of. No ONE person said or did anything to bend me out of shape.