Hi, friends. It has been a long time. Much longer than I had anticipated or intended, so forgive me if this gets long. I knew I needed to take a step back from The Stolen Colon when I was feeling overwhelmed with two young kids and a number of other responsibilities, but once I tried to move back into it, I found my site had been hacked and I lost a ton of my data, and just as I was trying to sort that out the pandemic hit and everything changed.

But today is the 10 year anniversary of my surgery to remove my colon and the official beginning of my journey living with an ostomy, so I’ve been reflecting this week on the past decade of my life. And I’m realizing that perhaps the story of The Stolen Colon has reflected my own journey.

Early on, I was terrified and I processed a lot of that online. I wrote furiously about nearly every new experience that I had and shared basic details about the early days of what living with an ostomy was like for me. As I learned more about how to live with an ostomy and I saw a dramatic shift for the good in my quality of life, I wanted to share that with anyone who needed to hear it. I tried to share tips that I had learned, pitfalls to avoid, sympathy and encouragement for the hard days, humor to chase away the fear, and community for anyone feeling in need of it. And I needed it. More than I originally knew. I soon found out just how amazing the community of people who are living with chronic illness, IBD, and/or ostomies is and it has had a profound impact on my life. There are a number of people out there who saw me in those terrifying moments and walked with me through them and I am forever grateful for them. And that’s what I hoped I could be for someone else. A voice letting them know that they would be ok, that their life wasn’t over, and that they could still flourish in a world where they wore a bag on their stomach. Because those were all of the things I was scared of to begin with.

When I first started blogging in 2012, there were maybe two other bloggers I knew of at the time who were sharing their story. I felt a void and wanted to help fill it. I wanted to be brave. I wanted the pain I had experienced to mean something. I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone and to let others know they weren’t either.

But things have changed over the past 10 years.

A whole new generation of advocates has risen up. People are finding community, sharing their stories, providing advice, humor, a virtual shoulder to lean on. The internet is a different place than it was in 2012. Than it was in 2017. (Are blogs even still a thing??) At the risk of sounding ancient, I’ll just shuffle right past any reminiscing on simpler times before there were more platforms and apps than I now know what to do with. But I’ll leave it as an acknowledgment that the world of ostomies is not as quiet as it once was.

And I have changed, too. Where once The Stolen Colon was where so much of my energy went, I now have an almost 7-year-old and a 4-year-old who fill my days with joy, anxiety, frustration, laughter and exhaustion. I have other projects and jobs to do and many (so many) books to read and things I want to learn. And in the past few years of living through a pandemic and some heartbreaks and new friendships and new perspectives on the world around me, my ostomy has faded into the background. Any more, it is not something that I notice on a daily basis. Of course I still have to take care of it every day and notice when it’s time for a bag change, but it’s just a part of the routine that I don’t really think about, in the same I assume people who haven’t had their colon removed don’t really think about how they poop. Yes, it’s a part of life, but it doesn’t really capture your attention on any sort of regular basis.

So as my awareness of my ostomy has faded, so too has my inclination to write about it. I’m at the point where I simply forget to think about how my ostomy might affect my trying to do this or that. In a way, my fading away from The Stolen Colon seems to reflect how having an ostomy has faded to the background in my life.

I know this is not where many of you are. I know some of you are still struggling. I know some of you can’t imagine a day where you don’t think about having an ostomy. But it is my hope that you can eventually make it to that point, if that’s what you want. Having an ostomy has changed my life in profound ways that I am actually very thankful for at this point in my life. But I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without going through the really hard times, too. The times when it felt hopeless. The times when I felt really alone. It has helped me to appreciate what I have been able to experience now.

So while living with an ostomy has forever changed me and will always be an important part of my story, I no longer feel so overwhelmed by its presence as I once was. It has become a part of the landscape of who I am, but it has blurred a bit over the years. It’s a few important brushstrokes on the canvas of my life, but not the whole picture. And I’m incredibly thankful that what seemed so terrifying 10 years ago, has given me a bigger say in where it goes from here.

I appreciate you all. We share something most of the world will never understand. Sending love