Have you ever worked on something long and hard just to have it fall apart one day because of something you did?
Tonight, during the announcement of my new writing retreats in Mexico and the highly advertised launch of my free Fight Holiday Body Shaming program, my website completely crashed.
And I caused it.
The site was running slowly from too much traffic, so I asked my host for help and changed some things around and suddenly I was looking at a version of my site from July.
The page for the writing retreats? Completely gone. The page for the program I was paying to be advertised all over social media as FREE? A year old version telling people they had to pay $300 for it and sending them to a long-gone website to do so.
Along with those programs, I’d lost six months worth of blog posts, updates, and changes I’d made to my site and my branding. And my host says there is absolutely nothing they can do to fix it.
The back-ups I was supposed to do daily? Somehow I’d lost them.
I searched long and hard for someone else to blame, and got pretty mad at my hosting service for the role they played in this, but the fact is there’s no one to blame but me. I messed with my hosting without having a full backup of my site, ignoring one of the most basic rules of running a site.
As one does, I started down quite the spiral of shame, calling myself an idiot and banging my head rather painfully on my desk, scaring my dog Albie.
Then I did the only thing I know how to do in a shit storm: I made myself a drink and sat down to write.
Here are some of the things I reminded myself as I wrote:
- I am allowed to make mistakes, even ones that hurt me. I’m going to screw up, sometimes royally, and that’s okay. That’s life. It’s not our mess ups that define us, but how we deal with the aftermath that does. (click to tweet this)
- I’m promoting a program fighting shame, there is no point in shaming myself, I’d just be a hypocrite.
- I’ve survived a hell of a lot worse. I’ve held three family members as they died, I’ve fallen to absolute rock bottom and rebuilt my life and career from scratch. I can handle a little website malfunction.
- When you can’t fix something, rebuild it into something better. That’s what I’ve done with my life, that’s what I’ll do with my site.
I’m working with my old host and a tech helper to see if there’s a newer version of my site anywhere that I can use, but whether we find that or not it really doesn’t matter.
Either way, I’m going to go open a good bottle of wine and have some dinner with my sister. Either way, I’m going to wake up tomorrow, make myself a cup of tea and write. Either way, I’m going to treat myself to love, kindness, and patience.
Who knows when my site will be back to what I’d like it to be, but either way I know you have my back. Either way, I know you support me as I am, mess ups and all. And that’s why I love and appreciate you so very much.
With love, light, and complete gratitude,
Lauren
P.S. The Fight Holiday Body Shaming program is all via MailChimp, so it’s not affected by this website crash, which means you can 1. still enroll in it here if you haven’t yet by clicking here, and 2. still get your emails.
I’m loving your feedback so far and hope it continues to help you banish shame and shine this holiday season.
