Blog-iversary

It’s my anniversary.

No, not with a boyfriend, or a job, or even a disease. Mine is with a blog.

Last year on July 5th, the YAC started the Gutsy Generation blog - mainly emailing it out to each other and our parents. The goal was admirable, but lofty - have a youth IBD voice and share it all around the country. This post will serve as the 149th snapshot of our lives with IBD. The first month, a little over 400 people meandered through our site. Now, about three times that amount read our posts every month and so far we’ve reach over 7,800 hits. And Canada, well, we’ve gone international - people from the USA, UK, Poland, France, Israel, Australia, Russia, Germany, Latvia, Netherlands, Ukraine, Iran, Romania, and Spain have come to our blog. For a little blog that could, that’s not too shabby.

But for me, the blog has been much, much more. I kept a diary years ago - one that I hid under my bed and my sister would break into to read and tease me about my latest crush - but I stopped a long time ago when life got busy and things got complicated. The blog has been a weekly tab of my life, my health, my outlook on things. It has chronicled my entire journey into the OR, my past 365 days with Crohn’s - and that, that is an anniversary worth celebrating.

Of course, just like at the Oscar’s when the actors get so choked up they can’t thank everyone, I will fumble through my list of thank you’s. Thank you to the CCFC staff who have supported, believed in, and worked with the youth and YAC. Thank you to every person who has served on the YAC. Thank you to every CCFC volunteer. Thank you to the amazing blog contributers. Thank you to my friends and family and the people who inspire me to write posts about life with IBD.

But mostly, thank you to our international audience - growing in number and a contagious gutsy attitude - who read our posts, laugh and cry with us, and who make the roller coaster a much more enjoyable one to be on.

We are thrilled to be having our first birthday as an electronic journal - and we’ve set our sights on the horizon. We want to hit 10,000 blog visits by the end of August - we can do it, we have just about two months to get 2,000 visitors! Here is your challenge if you choose to accept it: send this blog to five people you know - anyone who has five minutes to read some gutsy material. Some of our most popular links include Anniversary (the original blog post!), John’s Inspiring Story, Pretty Please, No Pity Please, The Life Sentence, Tummy Cramps, Dizziness and Headaches, oh my! But let’s be honest - we love all of our posts.

To us - happy blog-iversary!

Jennie + the YAC