For twelve years I blogged, with a great deal of success, under the URL herkind.com. I named the blog after a poem by my favourite poet Anne Sexton. I just really relate to her creative journey (not the suicide part, thank goodness) but the discovering her talent around age 40 part.

Now for purely practical reasons, I’ve decided to change my website to my own name; easier to find, no misunderstandings. It makes sense.

The day I began this process I worked on figuring out the new interface into the evening. Then, when I lay down my head to sleep I began feeling slightly anxious about the whole thing.

Herkind.com had about 3,000 hits per month, not bad for an ordinary blog. Readers – whether regular folks like me or the editors and other professionals I try to impress – got used to my style, my emotional truths and my willingness to talk openly about difficult topics like loneliness, regret, grief, longing, and the like. (which isn’t to say I don’t sometimes write about fun things too, I hasten to add) I hope people can still find me and won’t give up when they type in the old site.

By far the biggest reason for the anxiety, however, is that I began this blog on my first ever personally owned computer, in my first apartment in Vancouver, where I experienced a few years of extremely important personal growth. I moved there after giving up a successful career, in mid-career, just before my 40th birthday, and began my journey as a writer and independent person – that is, independent of past obligations and constraints. It was an incredibly joyful, sometimes difficult and always worthwhile time in my life that marked a stark and necessary departure…. and arrival.

Try as I might to hang on to memories of those times, they are slowly fading through the mists of time. I worry about that. And it makes me sad. Though I hold on to the lessons, which of course is the most important part of it all.

I think I’ve found a way to feel okay about this website retirement though. Posts titled The Vault will bring the best of herkind.com into this blog, not for a rehash , but to remember and commemorate all the hard work. And also to introduce new readers to those parts of me.

Not to mention, no writer ever wants to let go of past good writing!

I’ll be slowly migrating some of all that, and the links to my writing work over here so bear with me as I’m a work in progress for the time being.

And welcome to cml.com!