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" &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like my kitchen has an open door to the world.&amp;quot; Elise Bauer, 47 simplyrecipes.com I have the good fortune to have been brought up by parents who are excellent home cooks. For years I thought that I, too, could cook; after all, I had watched my folks as a child and helped out making the salads and the salsa. But as a single, busy Silicon Valley consultant, I mostly ate out. It wasn&amp;#039;t until I was in my 40s, making a third call home in a month to ask a ridiculously simple cooking question, that I realized that my parents knew more about roasting, baking, braising, and saut\u00E9ing than I could ever hope to \u2014 and that I had better start learning from them for real.  Showing up for visits with pen and pad in hand, I&amp;#039;d watch my mother&amp;#039;s every move as she made dinner. Conversations at the dinner table turned to my parents&amp;#039; recipes and methods from four decades of cooking for a large family. I compiled family favorites, like my mom&amp;#039;s alb\u00F3ndigas soup and my dad&amp;#039;s stuffed bell peppers, and made Web pages for them, painstakingly coding every one by hand to post on my personal site. Everything changed, though, when blogging software became available. Suddenly, I could just type into a template, click a button, and presto \u2014 what used to take hours took just minutes.  As I posted more and more recipes, what caught me by surprise was how many people started reading the site, trying out the recipes, and commenting on them. Simply Recipes was meant to be basically a working set of cooking notes for me to share with my family and friends, but a lot more people than that started showing up to read it. At first, comments were difficult to get used to. Who were all these strangers remarking on my recipes? Over time, though, I realized that not only do people care enough about what I&amp;#039;m doing to leave a comment about it, but they&amp;#039;re also teaching me to be a better cook. One reader taught me how to knock the socks off a sauce by adding pancetta to the base. Recently, a group of readers rightly decided that my mango chicken curry could benefit from the addition of some coconut milk. Through this blog I&amp;#039;ve magically tapped into a world of thousands of people who collectively know more about food and cooking than I ever could. Cooking is communal; it is so much more fun when doing it with friends. &amp;quot;I let everything out to make sense of my life again.&amp;quot; Mir Kamin, 36 wouldashoulda.com It wasn&amp;#039;t at all where I&amp;#039;d pictured my life going: My nine-year marriage had crashed and burned, leaving me with two small children, one large mortgage, and few recent credits to my r\u00E9sum\u00E9 beyond the ability to lactate on command. For a year I&amp;#039;d managed to believe that everything would be okay. Then I lost my crappy, just-for-now job, and the old friend with whom I&amp;#039;d found love said he wasn&amp;#039;t sure that he was ready for &amp;quot;all of this.&amp;quot; My &amp;quot;Things are getting better&amp;quot; mantra was replaced by &amp;quot;Every time I think that it can&amp;#039;t get worse, it does.&amp;quot; I figured I could either spend my evenings cleaning the house or returning to the one pursuit I&amp;#039;d always loved: writing. The laundry piled up and I started a blog. I called it &amp;quot;Woulda Coulda Shoulda,&amp;quot; because that seemed to be the recent refrain of my life \u2014 if only I&amp;#039;d done this or hadn&amp;#039;t done that. I could sink slowly into a pit of doubt and despair, or I could let everything out and maybe make sense of my life again.  I wrote about everything. I wrote about how angry I was that I couldn&amp;#039;t find a decent job after spending just three years at home with my kids; I wrote about my hysterectomy and how the hormone patches I wore looked like giant corn pads for the buttocks; I wrote about the funny things my kids said. The strangest thing happened when I started spilling my guts online: People started hanging around. They&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Hey, me too!&amp;quot; or, &amp;quot;Wow, that was really funny,&amp;quot; or, &amp;quot;Hang in there.&amp;quot; Lo and behold, I was not, in fact, the only struggling single mother on the planet! I found kindred spirits, an audience, and a support system. Four years later, I&amp;#039;ve blogged through half of my son&amp;#039;s life. I wrote it all, good and bad: another terrible job, totaling my car, landing my first writing gig, giving my daughter The Talk, the return of the not-ready old friend (who \u2014 years later \u2014 is now the world&amp;#039;s greatest husband and stepdad), and the grand odyssey of blending a family. And \u2014 oh, yeah \u2014 becoming a professional writer. It wasn&amp;#039;t at all where I&amp;#039;d pictured my life going. Don&amp;#039;t tell anyone, but I&amp;#039;m thrilled that I had it wrong. It&amp;#039;ll be our little secret; just between you, me, and the Internet. &amp;quot;I look at my craft blog as an opportunity to inspire others.&amp;quot;  Kathy Cano-Murillo, 43 craftychica.com I&amp;#039;ve always been a diary fanatic. As a kid, I journaled about everything from boys to bad haircuts. But then I grew up and started a family \u2014 and my own art business. My husband and I made a line of Mexican-inspired home accessories and jewelry that we sold to hundreds of boutiques all over the country. Juggling diaper bags and paintbrushes 24/7 forced writing into the backseat. Then blogging came along, and I gave it a spin in 2003. By that time, I&amp;#039;d been writing a craft column for a local newspaper, and I decided to use my blog as another way to let the world know about my secret dream to become an art superstar: I daydreamed about teaching classes on every continent and inspiring women everywhere to embrace the healing powers of glitter. Once I got started, I added in stories about my kids and ideas for easy craft projects. I shared details about where our art was being sold and offered advice for newbie artists. I used the tagline &amp;quot;Crafts, drama, and glitter&amp;quot; to tie all the posts together, both literally and metaphorically. I typed away in the middle of the night about the most exciting or emotional moments of the day. Every time I hit the &amp;quot;publish&amp;quot; button, goose bumps raced up my arms \u2014 that was my message being sent out to the world! As a budding businesswoman, I began tracking my incoming traffic and realized that my audience was much bigger than I had imagined \u2014 hundreds of readers a day. I began looking at my blog as more than just a personal diary. Each blog post became an opportunity to inspire others, break stereotypes, or make people laugh. I made the most of popular Internet social networks, double-posting my journal entries to MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. And people began to take notice. In the five years since I began my blog, I&amp;#039;ve landed national TV appearances, speaking engagements, and book deals. I was even approached by a manufacturing company to launch a Crafty Chica product line, which hits store shelves this month! These days, my little blog receives close to 10,000 unique visitors a month. I started a diary and I created a brand \u2014 me! &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve taken back ownership of the term soccer mom.&amp;quot; Nicole Teed, 32 thesoccermomvote.com I was standing in my messy kitchen, listening to NPR and feeding mashed bananas to my toddler, when the political commentary hit a nerve. I grumbled for a minute about the lack of insight demonstrated by our political leaders, until I realized that my only audience was sitting there drooling, waiting patiently for her sippy cup.  Surely I&amp;#039;m not the only one who misses grown-up discussions, I thought. With the birth of my daughter, I&amp;#039;d traded my full-time job in health care for a part-time position in the nonprofit sector \u2014 a move that granted me more time for parenting but less time for conversations with people who could form complete sentences. Although my local mom friends were an intelligent bunch, our conversations tended to revolve around (and be constantly interrupted by) our children.  At that point, I&amp;#039;d been narrating my family&amp;#039;s story online for almost two years, connecting with others \u2014 many of them mothers \u2014 by blogging. Maybe these funny and thoughtful women would be interested in joining me for some political banter? When I emailed around to find out, the answer from them was a resounding &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; Together we created a collaborative blog called The Soccer Mom Vote.  The blog has become a space where anyone can speak her mind alongside our core group of smart and sassy contributors. We&amp;#039;ve posted articles and opinion pieces about everything from school vouchers to international relations. Certain topics, such as the role of religion in politics, have generated especially lively exchanges. But we agree to keep the conversation respectful, we agree to use our inside voices and avoid name-calling, and sometimes we agree to disagree.  Somewhere along the line, the soccer-mom stereotype granted all mothers of young children ponytails and minivans but stripped us of our expertise and critical-thinking skills. With the community built through this site, we&amp;#039;ve taken back ownership of the term soccer mom and demonstrated how savvy mothers really think about current events. (Hint: We&amp;#039;re truly not that concerned about a candidate&amp;#039;s charm.) With the clickity-clack of the keys, we engage in lively and even angry debate and prove \u2014 to others and ourselves \u2014 that we didn&amp;#039;t check our opinions and ideas at the entrance to labor and delivery. &amp;quot;My blog has kept me from giving up on myself.&amp;quot; Kim Robinson, 37 icannotbelieveiamblogging.blogspot.com Recently I did something so surreal that I&amp;#039;m still not quite sure it happened. I tried on a pair of shorts in a size 8 \u2014 and they fit! I checked that tag a half a dozen times to make sure that my eyes weren&amp;#039;t playing tricks on me. They weren&amp;#039;t.  I started my gazillionth attempt to lose weight two years ago, with the hope of losing 90 pounds. I was exhausted all the time and unhappy with myself. Every day there was so much to do for everyone else that taking care of me was always the first thing to come off my daily task list. It was when I realized that I was cheating my kids out of my being the best mom I could be that I knew I had to change, but the task seemed so insurmountable that I could hardly allow myself to believe it could happen. Still, I kept reading weight-loss blogs about women who had accomplished the very thing I dreamed of doing.  Since I&amp;#039;ve kept journals for as long as I can remember, it made sense for me to take the plunge and create a blog of my own. I never even told anyone other than my sister that I had started blogging. The last thing I wanted (or needed!) was to have people I know looking at me and thinking all of the horrible things that I thought about myself. How embarrassing! But as I began commenting on weight-loss blogs (and including a link to my own), other bloggers began reading. And even though I felt like all I did was complain, they began commenting \u2014 and, thanks to their sweet words of encouragement, I began living a healthier lifestyle. They were kind to me when I couldn&amp;#039;t be kind to myself. The support I&amp;#039;ve received has been nothing short of amazing. I have never met any of these other bloggers in person, but I feel such a strong sense of friendship.  Now, almost two years later and 70 pounds lighter, I use my blog as a safe place to brag about my success and confess when I feel like I&amp;#039;m struggling. It has kept me honest and accountable, lifted my spirits, and made me feel understood. It has kept me from giving up on myself. All of this from people who would never have known a single thing about me, let alone the deep dark secret of how much I weigh. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re a community that touches real lives every day.&amp;quot; Stefania Pomponi Butler, 38 kimchimamas.typepad.com Back in 2003, when I started my personal blog, CityMama (citymama.typepad.com), my aim was to chronicle what life was like for a 30-something mom living in an urban environment with a baby. As CityMama grew, I began to get comments and emails from women who didn&amp;#039;t share my urbanite parenting experience \u2014 they were relating more to my being a Korean-Italian-American mother. When I wrote about the afternoons I&amp;#039;d catch the bus to take my toddler out to our weekly Korean lunch date, the comments flooded in with readers&amp;#039; writing me that their kids loved Korean food too. It got me thinking that the real story missing from the blogs was the Korean-American parenting experience.  Inspired by the launch of ricedaddies.com, a collaborative blog for Asian dads, I emailed all the blog friends I knew who were connected to Korean culture in some way. In April 2006, Kimchi Mamas was born. Kimchi (or kimchee) is a spicy Korean condiment that&amp;#039;s part of every meal. Kimchi Mamas who contribute to this collective blog are half Korean like me or are Korean-American or Korean adoptees to Caucasian parents or are Caucasians married to Korean men. Anyone can blog on the site; the only requirement for writers is that Korean identity or culture must deeply touch their lives in some way \u2014 and, of course, that they be mothers.  Kimchi Mamas is a safe place for us to discuss the unique issues that affect us as mothers \u2014 as well as share the joys and frustrations of parenting. Whether it&amp;#039;s planning dols (first birthday parties), trying to build relationships with in-laws who may not speak English well, or confronting racism, the concerns we share as Kimchi Mamas allow connections to grow beyond the screen. We donate ad revenue to charities like the Asian Pacific Women&amp;#039;s Center, and we&amp;#039;ve rallied around Kimchi Mamas who were dealing with tough circumstances like a contentious divorce or a death in the family. In the end, Kimchi Mamas is more than just a place where writers contribute posts; it&amp;#039;s a community that reaches through the blogosphere and touches real lives every day. FIND YOUR OWN SPOT IN CYBERSPACE Discovering the right blog community can be like finding the right pair of jeans: It should feel comfortable, not too constricting, and dependable. Here are a few platforms and communities to get you started \u2014 either blogging or browsing. Create a blog.  Blogger.com,livejournal.com, and wordpress.com are free sites that allow you to create a blog. Or, get your feet wet by contributing to a Web community like divinecaroline.com or tokoni.com. These sites allow you to post entries about topics you&amp;#039;re interested in but don&amp;#039;t require you to set up a blog page.  Find a blog.  Check out blogher.com, a community that lists more than 10,000 blogs sorted by topic, ranging from relationship blogs to blogs about cars, all written by women. To get a taste, take a look at Sleep Is for the Weak. Due out in September, this anthology of the best writing from BlogHer&amp;#039;s parenting blogs includes a foreword by REDBOOK&amp;#039;s own editor- and blogger-in-chief, Stacy Morrison.  Read the REDBOOK blogs!  Log on to redbookmag.com/blogs for a daily dose of honesty on topics ranging from cooking to infertility.   \u2014 Anna Davies "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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