New year, New blog

 

When I sat down to write this post, I was brought back to 2012, when I started Who Shot Down My Stork?, a blog about infertility and trying to conceive. That blog saw me through failed IVFs, miscarriages, meeting new Internet friends (which despite what my mom in 2012 was worried about, didn’t turn out to be crazy weirdos), and the birth of my daughter. 

This past summer, the seed was planted in my head to maybe make a change. To go from my free little Blogger site to something that I owned. That was mine. Little did I know how much work my own website would actually be. That’s ok. We’re here. Launch day. My site isn’t finished yet. I’m not satisfied with it since we lost a day and a half recently being sick with a stomach virus (thank you, germy baby) and there is more work to be done. But I would like to introduce you to my new space.

Why did I rebrand myself to my own name?

Who Shot Down My Stork? was a blog about my journey in infertility. But over time, the more I wrote, the more of a community I started building. I soon realized, it wasn’t just about my infertility, and finally, the birth of my daughter. People were emailing me, messaging me, telling me how they shared my blog with their friend who was also going through infertility. Telling me how much my blog meant to them during their own struggles. How much they love hearing about my daughter because they are new moms too and enjoyed the updates on her, as it related to their own lives.

So with a colossal leap of faith, I changed my brand name of “Who Shot Down My Stork?” to simply, “Risa Kerslake.” It didn’t come easy and I struggled with what other people would think. My identity was in WSDMS. I began as an infertility blogger, but that’s not what I am now. My focus was to stop hiding behind the “Stork blog” and be an actual person that someone can connect with. To have the freedom to write about infertility and parenthood, and whatever else is going on in my life as well. After my first miscarriage, we had to put my childhood dog, Maggie, to sleep after 17 years. I didn’t blog about it, because it wasn’t related to infertility. I want the freedom now to talk about whatever I want, without being constricted to an identity. 

The content on RisaKerslakeWrites.com won’t change. I’m still the same blogger I was with WSDMS. But it’s coming from a more confident place. The more I share who I am with you, the more I hope you are able to connect with me. 

With this change comes a whole new site so let me share some things about it with you.

What are some improved things about this site?

I designed this site to make it easier for you to navigate. The sidebars (or below posts if you’re on a mobile device) have all my posts sorted into categories. Want to read only posts related to infertility? Or only about my pregnancy? All you have to do is click on one. I’ve improved my tags on posts (which is still a work in progress). 

I have a better contact form for emailing me. I actually have an About Me page now. (Do you have any idea how hard those things are to write?) 

Probably the feature I’m most excited about is my email list. I’ve placed a sign-up on my home page as well as on the sidebars. By entering in your email, you will be placed on my newsletter list. This is probably more exciting to me than it is to you. I don’t want this post to get too long, so more about that later.

But there are some things I still need to work on.

Moving over content from my old site kind of messed up some formatting. The price you pay to drag over your memories from another platform. 

The writing is smaller on those old posts. Chris is working on trying to fix that, but if he can’t, it means I need to manually go through and change the font. Ask me how much I’m looking forward to that. 

Same goes for old links and photos on those really old posts. I had a bad habit of using Internet photos and some of those have disappeared. So it’s kind of a mess and it’s probably my goal for 2017 to fix all of this. 

I still need to bring over some stuff from the old site like my infertility timeline and my pregnancy bump photos. 

So bear with me. These things will get fixed, but it’s going to take time. If you come across something weird on here, like you have trouble commenting or signing up for emails, please let me know. 

Welcome to my new blog!

Despite all the frustrations with this site, I am really excited to move forward with it. Your regularly scheduled posts on Olivia and how I eat too much pizza will commence tomorrow. 

I’m so glad you’re here. Poke around a bit and let me know in the comments what you think!