A secret keeper, I am not. But I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping a fairly large secret from the internet for nearly five months.

I didn’t do it to see if I could keep a secret. I didn’t do it because I don’t want to share. I did it for a lot of messy and complicated reasons – work, personal, feminist – that I may get into at a later date.

But yesterday, I got a couple rounds of earth shattering news. And my first response to all of it was #fuckcancer. I don’t know that there is any more appropriate response than that. But my second response was to realize that, while we’ve kept this news to ourselves, instead of sharing it with the internet at large, it was for reasons that, in the long run, don’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that I may not get a job because of this news.

It doesn’t matter that I feel like it’s not my duty to “perform” for the world at large.

It doesn’t matter that I want to keep everything private, to share the news in person.

What does matter is that good news should be shared with the people we love. And since so many of the people I love are not nearby, since my greatest dream in all the world is for all of my family to be in the same place for just one day (a dream I may never, ever, get to see happen), this place has become a space where I can share my work and my life with those who love us.

And who doesn’t love a good Christmas present?!?!

We’ve visited Europe and attended half a dozen weddings together already this year, so I guess it’s time this sweet babe made his or her internet debut!