Somewhere in November of 2006, I let something out I hadn’t meant to share—just a breath at first. But it turned into a voice.

It wasn’t calculated.
It was necessary.
And it was brave.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I needed to say something. Anything. Loudly. On the internet. Before I drowned in the noise inside my own head. And so I did. Again and again. Fourteen times in one month. Then hundreds of times in the years that followed.

And now?

This is post 1200.

It’s not a chorus.
It’s a signal—a steady one. Sent again and again into the dark with no promise of return, only the need to speak.
It’s a record of every time I said, “I’m here.” Even if no one answered.
It’s a reliquary of selves I’ve outgrown and ones I still miss—each post a tiny artifact of who I was when I needed to be witnessed.
It’s a candle lit 1,200 times. Each one flickering. Each one necessary. Each one mine.
It’s a gluten-free breadcrumb trail made of sentences I couldn’t swallow. A path back to the parts of me I didn’t know how to hold.
It’s a pulse. Soft. Unrelenting. Proof that I lived, even when I didn’t feel real.
It’s not a chorus.
It’s just me.

Still here.
Still speaking.

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I wrote about motherhood when I was barely surviving it.
I wrote about love when I didn’t know how to accept it.
I wrote about community when I was building it for everyone else but me.
I wrote about mental health before I had the language for what was wrong.
I wrote about autism before I knew I was autistic.
I wrote about me before I knew who I was.

And somehow, all those versions of me—tired, loud, silly, masked, unraveling, radiant—pressed “publish” and made it real.

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To the version of me who hit publish with a baby in her lap: I love you.
To the version of me who hit publish with a drink in hand and a joke on her lips: I love you.
To the version of me who hit publish with a migraine, a broken heart, or a quiet sense of doom: I love you.
To the version of me who stopped writing for months because the noise got too loud: I love you.
To the version of me who came back, again and again: I love you most of all.

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This blog has never been about perfection. It’s about documentation. Of growth. Of grief. Of delight. Of processing in public because I didn’t know how to do it quietly. And now, nearly two decades later, I get to say:

I’m still here.
I’m still writing.
I still don’t know exactly who I am.
But I like her.
And I love the girl who started this.

So… here’s to 1,200.

Not a milestone.
A monument.
Not the end.
Just another version of me—hitting publish.