I have not blogged on a regular basis for the last several months.  It seems that when I’m not with my family or doing homework for my classes, I have been doing things for our local homeschool group.  I have not had time to write, despite the fact that it is an outlet that means a lot to me.  Things changed yesterday – these changes are GOOD for me.  Yesterday I resigned from all of the leadership positions I held in our local homeschool group.  I will continue to teach classes in the departments, but I will no longer have a position of leadership.

What could happen to cause me to make such a decision?  The reason is simple, my online life and local homeschool group life met each other.  My blog was found by another board member and three posts were deemed inappropriate for someone in leadership.  These were posts written about things that had happened in our local group.  While the posts were not written in a hurtful way, they were received as hurtful by some of the other group leaders.

Ages ago, I told my husband that if I ever had to choose between my blog and leadership in the group that my blog would win.  Yesterday when faced with a decision of how the situation of my blog was going to be remedied, my immediate reaction was to say that I would step away from the leadership positions.  My feelings were still strong despite the fact that my schedule has not allowed me to blog in weeks.  I emailed a formal letter of resignation to the board of the local group shortly after returning home from the academic panel meeting.

After I sent in my resignation I started thinking….how did the board member find my blog?  Was this a result of someone actively searching for my blog to find out what I talked about on a secular blog?  Did a family member tell a friend who was in a leadership position?

Very few people in our local group even knew I had a blog.  Those who knew I had a blog, only knew that I wrote a blog about homeschooling from a secular point of view.  I intentionally have left out specific information about my location in Missouri, the domain registration is private, my last name is not used on the blog, no pictures of my family or myself appear on the blog, etc.  I don’t think a simple search would lead someone to my blog quickly given the information that was known.  Since one of the offending articles was written months ago, just reading the first few posts of my blog wouldn’t make someone think, hey that’s our group she’s writing about.

To be honest, I got mad for a few hours.  I felt like either a particular member of my husband’s family decided to tell a mutual friend about my blog or I was a target of someone who was digging for dirt.  I felt that someone had gone to entirely too much effort to out Heathen Mom.

The short period of anger quickly passed and I once again felt relief by my initial reaction.  The funny thing is, I didn’t keep my blog from being common knowledge in the local group because I felt that it was something that needed to be hidden.  I kept the two worlds separate because I knew that the two could not live peacefully together.  I will be passing along several boxes of materials and notes to other leaders within the organization.  I hope to make the transition as smooth as possible.  I am going to enjoy the fact that my only responsibility will be my teaching positions.

Stepping away from the leadership positions will allow me the time and energy to focus on other things.  I am happy that I will have more time to write about homeschooling and the adventures we have.