My Blogging Hero

For those of you that know me well, you'll know that a) I love blogging, b) I love reading blogs and c) I absolutely love The Bloggess. She's my all-time favourite blogger in the history of the internets. And the universe. Ever. In my humble opinion, she's absolutely bloody fabulous.

Let me tell you why I think she's absolutely bloody fabulous. I came across Jenny Lawson (that's her name) on the internets one day, as one does when they find a blogger because that's where they live, on the internets. For real. I read one post and promptly had tears of laughter streaming down my face, and then much like a ravaging drug addiction, I couldn't stop. I spent hours reading every.single.thing she had ever written on her blog and from that day forward I've never stopped. I make a daily stop off at her blog which is mostly filled with "irreverent, biting satire" - her own words - but other times, it is filled with love, pain, compassion, honesty, generosity and inspiration. 

Jenny suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, depression and anxiety (Jenny if you happen to read this - which would be AWESOME - I'm sorry if I got those wrong) but her flame, or her spirit, however you want to name it, still burns with more ferocity than I could ever hope for. She is one of the most inspiring people you could ever come across.

For Christmas 2010, she did this. 

For Christmas 2011, she did this.

She also did this. Jenny started a phenomenon known as The Travelling Red Dress - a dress that was deemed so impractical and unnecessary yet to quote the lady herself:

I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be.  And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”.  Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better.  Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it.

 The Travelling Red Dress now has it's own Facebook page and women the world over are sending red dresses to each other in the name of love and inspiration. And Jenny.

The thing about her is, I'm not sure she's aware of how totally awesome she is and that makes me kinda sad. Because she is so awesome. I wrote to her a couple of years ago when I was going through some major stresses in my life and had a mini-meltdown, and I asked her where I was going to find my joy again. My joy had disappeared and I was worried it would never come back again. And this complete stranger, who probably receives twelvety million emails a day, took the time to respond to me with such compassion, good advice and good humour that I promised myself to forever take her advice and not let myself get that way again.

I'm still fairly new to blogging and am nowhere near as funny as The Bloggess but one day, I hope to be as amazing as her - not just at blogging but at life too.