Over the last few months, the Hive Discord server has been hopping with activity. Seeing all the Hiveians talking and exchanging ideas has been so much fun. As always, not everyone agrees with each other, but the discussions I have witnessed have been civil, and it warms my heart to see people working out issues in nonabusive ways.

One of the shows in the Hive Discord is HiveThrive, which is run by @Shadowspub and @Buttcoins. Last week, they interviewed my son @Ecoinstant. I had set my alarm, and my headphones were on, all ready to hear what my son had to say.

When the show started, my husband walked into the kitchen where my computer was and started talking to me. Next, the phone that had not made a peep all day started ringing, and the next thing I knew, a lady was stopping to take some of my blood.

The next thing I knew, I heard the HiveThrive show ending! Out of all the shows I have been listening to, the one I was most excited to hear I had missed! Luckily, I knew the person who recorded the show and asked them if I could listen to a copy of it.

While listening, the excerpts posted here stuck out to me and made me laugh and smile! I knew then that the truth about how I ended up on Hive had to be told.

In my last post, I wrote about how I had become ill and lost my job. How I had learned to play games as a way of managing my pain. I hate how pain medication makes me feel, and I found certain games keep me distracted enough that I did not have to take so many pain meds.

The problem was that Facebook was changing, and so were the games. They were expensive to play, and I didn't have a job, so there was no money to spend on a game when we didn't know if we would have food that week.

I became very depressed, something that my son @Ecoinstant noticed all the way from Colombia. He saw his Mom becoming a shell of who she was, which upset him. He did his best to cheer me on when I did anything. I was playing World of Warcraft then and had also put in many hours in a game called Rift.

This was when my son decided I should write a blog. He had made a website and decided that blog writing would benefit me. I, on the other hand, disagreed.

I was not a writer. I can not spell. I barely passed High School and flunked English class in my junior year. I was a storyteller but not a writer. I am not stupid. In every job I had, I learned how to do it from nothing and ended up running the departments I was in.

When a place I worked for closed its doors, my phone rang with job offers the next day. Soon after leaving school, I learned that the teachers were the problem, not me and my brain. Yet I also knew my limitations. I was not a writer.

To stop my son from bugging me to write a blog, I wrote two posts that no one ever saw. My son could not say I didn't try, and I never had to do that again.

Then @Ecoinstant found The Blockchain. He was so excited—it was this new thing! He would always talk about it and tell me how anyone could join. He would tell me how I should join and write blogs! He would tell me how there were so many people on The Blockchain that people read blogs there!

I told him thank you, but I have done that, and I really don't want to do that again because I am not a writer. I am a storyteller but not a writer. And I can not spell. I can not write one thousand words. I can read a two-thousand-page book, but write? No, thank you.

I promised I would read everything he wrote. He didn't give up, so I sent the next best thing: my friend @Simgirl. She was a writer. The Blockchain was made for people like her. She had just written a book.

She joined The Blockchain and took to it like a duck in water. She joined Discord and the Pal Discord, met @Thekittygirl, and made friends and posts that earned her three to four hundred dollars a post. She loved it. My son should have been happy with that. @Simgirl should have been happy, too, but... They both turned on me.

Two people now told me about this wonderful place, and I HAD to join and write posts there. After two weeks of both bugging me, I made an account.

My son added me to a Homestead Slack group and left me there. I am not a Homesteader, a writer, or in my twenties and into new-age things. What I did not want to do was embarrass my son. The Blockchain was his place. I did not understand his posts or most of anyone else's posts.

I did not want to join any groups because I had had more than my fair share of Facebook groups, and women can be mean. I had enough problems staying positive that I didn't need to join another group of mean people.

I spent my time reading posts and leaving comments here and there. Then, one day, in the Homesteading Slack group, @MarianneWest left a message about a "thing" she would try on The Blockchain. The thing she was going to try and start was called The Freewriters. Just typing that makes me smile.

Now, you have to understand that at this time, the unwritten rule for writing a post was that it should be about one thousand words. It was stressed that only quality posts/stories should be made. Grammar and spelling meant everything if you were going to write a post. If your post was not seen as perfect, you would be looked down on.

I was not a writer. I could not spell, and sentence structure is something I still can not tell you what is good or bad or how to improve your sentences. My son invited me here, and I did not want to embarrass him. Not that he would ever have said anything to me, but as a mom, I was in his space. The Blockchain wasn't mine...yet.

The Freewriters was a daily prompt. One word or short phrase. You wrote a post using that word however you wanted. The difference was that there were no rules. The rules were there were no rules. If you misspelled a word, it was okay. It would be okay if you didn't write anything that made sense. It was a place to get people writing. And it worked.

On day three of the daily Freewrite prompt, I wrote my first post, and I did not miss a day for over 100 days. I wrote funny stories and poemy things. I met people in the comments of those posts, made friendships, and laughed until I cried.

This is all because my son put me in a Homesteading Slack group full of people with whom I had nothing in common. I found my voice. I found a place to let the real me shine. I also knew what was happening would not embarrass my son because I had found my little spot on the Blockchain, and The Blockchain was big enough for everyone.

So, to answer the question, I never hide the fact that Ecoinstant is my son. Ecoinstant never hides that I am his Mom. I am so proud of all he has done in his life and on Hive. I could not ask for a better son. While we think a lot alike, we use The Blockchain very differently, and both made our way here on our own.

Why Hive is such a special place for any and all who dare to be themselves.

But I will say that if it wasn't for @Enginewitty and his kindness all those years ago, when I needed it most, I would have left the blockchain. So, really, he is to blame for why I am still here.