A Blog By Any Other Name...

So here it is. The new blog name: Mama Sarahndipity. It's going to take me awhile to get used to it and after all the great suggestions I got, I'm kind of wishing I could rotate 4-5 different names. Thanks so much for all the suggestions I received in the comments section, via email and Facebook. It was sweet of so many of you to take a second out of your day to help me come up with a new name. The name I ultimately went with was inspired by my cousin Maggie who messaged me on FB, so giant thanks to you, Maggie! It's good having artists in the family!

I thought Mama Sarahndipity worked best for me because of the definition of "serendipity" & how it applies to my life in these past few years. Serendipity is the phenomenon of stumbling upon good fortune and/or discoveries that are unintended. Author & dictionary editor Erin McKean (I'm betting she's wicked smart) says that "...serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damn difficult."

That about sums up life for me. It rarely goes the way I'd expected, or planned, or even worked my ass off for (please see all previous posts regarding that bitch, Infertility). But there always seems to be a discovery I make along the way--about the people in my life, the greater picture, myself--that changes me in some way, hopefully for the better. I think of serendipity as a kind of secular faith---you might not always get the answer you want from the universe, but if you pay attention & give it a chance, the universe will let you know what you need, even if it's not what you, with every fiber of your being, wanted.

This blog, itself, was a form of serendipity for me. I started it when I was on bedrest. All the time I was focusing on just getting to the next doctor's appointment, getting to full term, having a healthy baby; I didn't realize when I opened up my computer on February 8th 2006 & decided to figure out what all this weblog business was about that I was creating something that would become a part of my life, a means of expression and a voice--sometimes the only voice I feel I have. Without the terrifying & otherwise isolating experience of bedrest, this little blog, which is such a part of my life, would not exist. Serendipitous.

I've made other discoveries in the past few years--about being a parent, a wife, a friend & daughter. Some of them I've shared here & others I never will (and you wouldn't want me to!).

Serendipity also has the distinction, according to Wikipedia, of being one of the top ten most difficult words to translate from the English language. I think life can be like that as well. I mean, if it weren't, would the greatest philosophical question known to the human race be: "What is the meaning of life?"? I like that there's a word in the English language that's meaning teeters on ineffable, that sort of turns to feathers in your fingers & floats away on the breeze. And I like that my name is hiding in that word somewhere.

So Mama Sarahndipity it is.