I remember sitting in front of my computer screen and looking at the page filled with words. The cursor was sitting over the PUBLISH button and all of these emotions came flooding in.
FEAR
RELIEF
HAPPINESS
SADNESS
I was so ready to hit the button because I knew that nothing worse could happen to me. I mean, after all, my blog post was talking about my sexual assault that had happened eleven years prior that NO ONE (well except for my hubby) had known about.
A secret that I was about to expose to the world.
A secret that I was FINALLY ready to share.
A secret that had controlled me for so many years.
I tapped the publish button and the blog post went live. I didn’t expect anyone to read it. I immediately felt this sense of relief. Knowing that this darkness no longer had any control over me. I didn’t care who knew. I just cared that I would finally feel a little bit of relief wash over me.
I never imagined the impact that hitting that publish button would truly have. For the first time in eleven years, I finally felt like I wasn’t alone. Women began to message me. Thanking me for sharing my story. Reminding me that I was brave and strong for being able to write such a post.
What those women didn’t realize is that they were giving me strength that I didn’t have. I didn’t have a plan before I published that blog post. I didn’t think anyone was going to read it but they did and here they were, all waiting for more.
Table of Contents
HOW BLOGGING FELL INTO MY LIFE
I was sold on blogging as being an online journal. I was told that no one would read what I would write so I could be openly honest about what I was talking about. That sold me. I had always loved to write. My grade 5 teacher taught me that writing was a way to deal with sadness and death. So I began then and didn’t stop until I was sexually assaulted.
In 2003, my life changed forever. I was a freshman in university. Attending my first choice university. I had my entire life ahead of me and I was so excited to be away from my parents. I was 18 and had never even kissed a boy and I thought I had finally gotten lucky that a boy would even show interest in me. I never dated in high school and so this was my chance.
After the sexual assault, I stopped living. I closed myself off. I got kicked out of school for not attending classes. I went back to live with my parents where my life just seemed to fade faster and faster. I stopped writing because it reminded me of everything I WAS before the assault. It reminded me of WHO I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
In 2014, as I sat in front of my computer with the words just pouring out of me, I saw a piece of that old Samantha come through. She was trying so desperately to be seen and heard. If I knew that people were going to read the words that I was going to write, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to hit the publish button that day.
But I am so glad that I did.
BLOGGING ISN’T JUST ABOUT PUTTING WORDS ON A PAGE
When I started in 2014, I didn’t know anything about blogging. I just knew that I needed to get the words out that were stuck inside of me for so long. And so that is what I did. I just began to write. I decided that it was time to finally fall in love with the Samantha that I currently was. I needed to learn how to love the broken pieces.
I began to share my story. I shared the real pieces of my life. The broken ones, the happy ones, the sad ones. I shared the moments of despair. I shared the moments when everything seemed to be falling into place. I began to create a world for me where my healing became the number one thing. I had women following along on my journey who wanted to know what I was doing.
My husband saw a difference. My kids began to see their real mom. There were no more moments of hiding behind a fake smile and wondering if I was going to make it through the day without crying.
I began to see a difference. I began to gain confidence and see myself as cracked but not broken. I opened up this world where it was safe to be yourself, where life didn’t have to be perfect.
As the years passed and blogging changed, I needed to learn how to reach the women that I truly wanted to reach. It wasn’t enough anymore to just put words on a page and hope that readers would come to me.
I don’t want it to sound like blogging was instantly successful for me. It wasn’t. I had readers. I had fans. I started a business to help women through my blog in 2016 but there was still a struggle. The struggle for me was listening to other people.
I thought that others knew what was best. I thought that in order to be successful as a blogger, I needed to do what every other blogger was out there doing. I needed to choose a niche and stick with it.
At this point in my blogging career, I was doing a combination of self-care/self-love blogging and teaching others how to blog. I had combined the two pieces of myself into one blog. I was told that I couldn’t do that. That in order to be truly successful, I needed to separate them and create two different blogs. I fought back for a while but eventually, I had decided that I needed to listen because they knew what was best and I just didn’t.
In June of 2020, after I had taken the leap to become a blogging coach, I had decided that I needed to break it up. So I completely redid my website and started writing ONLY about blogging. For the first little while, when the excitement was intense, I loved what I was doing. I was gaining readers. I even had been interviewed on a podcast and she called me a blogging expert.
Never in my life had someone referred to me as a blogging expert and so I continued.
Until somewhere along the line, it felt like I was missing from my blogging. The passion began to die because once again I had decided that those around me knew more about what I needed and wanted than what I did.
I tried to hide. I tried to walk away from blogging. I couldn’t. There were pieces of me that grew so fond of what I had created that I just couldn’t do it. I needed blogging as much as blogging needed me. That was when I decided on something.
OVERCOMING THE THOUGHTS OF OTHERS
In 2014, when I had first started blogging, I had also started my own self-love journey. This was really before self-love had become such a huge topic as it is now. I didn’t know who to follow or where I could learn how to love myself so I just made up steps as I went.
In this journey, I really began to dig into the thoughts that were consuming me. I realized that most of the feelings that I had about myself, never truly belonged to me. They were beliefs that I picked up through the years from things other people had said to me. I began to work through them and began to figure out what I had truly thought about myself.
The same thing happened in 2020 when I felt like something was missing. I needed to dig deeper to figure out what was truly missing. I began to realize that it was the other piece to the puzzle. It was the self-care and self-love piece that I thought I needed to remove to be successful as a blogger.
At the end of 2020, my writing began to change. I didn’t even realize it at first. It was a close friend and client of mine who had mentioned something to me. My writing became passionate again. I began to feel different and write differently because I had given myself permission to be myself.
3 TIPS TO ALLOWING YOURSELF TO TAKE THE LEAP
Writing can be scary. It is all about putting yourself out there in a vulnerable way. It is about creating a connection with complete strangers who are battling what it is that you battled in your past. I want to give you three tips that will help you be able to stand in your power.
1| Decide that your story matters.
BECAUSE IT DOES. Your story matters more than you will ever know. We seem to think that our past doesn’t matter because someone else had it worse than we did. Someone out there right now is waiting for you to share your story. You are the voice that they need. Not someone else.
The only way to truly start moving forward is by deciding that you are worthy of sharing your story. You have a story to tell.
2| Understand that your past offers you information into your current reality.
Yes, you can’t go back and redo the past BUT you can learn from it. By examining your past, you are giving yourself the best opportunity to grow from it.
We all have experiences that have shaped who we are in the current moment. By looking back at them, you are going to realize all the knowledge that you have and all the experiences you have overcome in your life. Use that knowledge to share your story. Use that knowledge to build a blog around yourself.
3| Allow yourself to be a beginner.
You do NOT need to know everything when starting a blog. You just need to begin. I didn’t know anything when I started. I just knew that I had a passion to write and that I wanted to change the world. Here is a 30 minute set up on WordPress.
Everyone is a beginner and there is nothing wrong with that. Learn along the way. Your readers are going to watch you grow and expand and they are going to be cheering you on along the way. Life is about the journey so why are you stopping yourself?
Embrace the journey.
Embrace the unknown.
Embrace the messiness.
Learn along the way because it is going to give you teachable moments that you can also share with those who follow you.
Blogging allowed me to rebuild myself in a way that I never could have imagined. It gave me a creative outlet. It gave me an opportunity to build a community around myself that I never would have any other way. It gave me an opportunity to share my story and connect to women who have also experienced trauma in their lives.
I am stronger because of blogging. I am helping women rebuild their lives because I made a decision to start writing. For me, it isn’t about creating a huge movement. For me, it is about creating an impact on women who then go to make an impact on those they want to help. Who are you going to impact with your story?
About The Author
Samantha is the owner and creator of Samantha Laycock Blogging. An Authentic Expression Coach for women ready to share their stories and heal from their past. She 35 years old, a mother of 3, a wife of 15 years, a sexual assault survivor, and a big advocate for sharing your story through blogging.
Her social media links are…
https://www.instagram.com/samanthalaycockblogging
https://www.facebook.com/samanthalaycockblogging
https://www.pinterest.ca/samanthalaycockblogger