Coming Back a Little Differently

I’ve been pretty quiet around The Storystead for a while. Much quieter than I planned to be, actually.

The project never went away. I didn’t lose interest in it, and I definitely didn’t stop thinking about it. There has been a lot happening behind the scenes with the website, the database, reading, planning, and figuring out what I actually want The Storystead to grow into. There has also been another reason I stepped back, and I don’t really want to come back and pretend it didn’t happen.

One of my best friends passed away. I had known him for more than ten years, and for at least the last two we talked every single day. He was one of the people who believed in The Storystead the most (outside of our favorite PR Guy). We talked about what it could become, how big I wanted to grow it, and all of my probably way-too-many ideas for the future. At one point he told me that if The Storystead ever reached the point where I wanted to make it a nonprofit, he would drop one of the other nonprofits he worked with so he could be part of it.

That was the kind of support he gave me. He didn’t just listen when I rambled about another book idea or something I wanted to add to the website. He really believed I could make something out of this.

Then I lost him, suddenly.

The timing also collided with something I hadn’t really considered when I started The Storystead. A huge part of my original plan was to start with grief books. I still think grief books are incredibly important. Sometimes a book gives you words when you don’t have them. Sometimes it helps a child understand what is happening. Sometimes it helps a parent figure out how to start a conversation. Sometimes it simply gives someone the comfort of seeing an experience that looks a little bit like their own.

But reading grief book after grief book when you are actively grieving your best friend is a lot.

A lot more than I expected.

At some point I had to admit that even though the books were meaningful and the work mattered to me, focusing so heavily on grief was having a real impact on my mental health. I needed to step away from it for a while.

And I felt guilty about that.

The Storystead is my passion project. I have spent money on it. I have spent a lot of time building it. I have plans. Big ones. Huge ones. I honestly thought I would have somewhere around 100 books in the database by now. I thought the social media pages would have grown more. I thought I would have already done a book giveaway and probably several other things that are still sitting on one of my endless lists.

Instead, I think there are somewhere around 10 to 15 books in the database right now.

Which is…not 100… Not anywhere close.

So yes, sometimes I look at The Storystead and feel incredibly behind. I know where I thought I would be by now, and this isn’t it. But I’m also learning to be okay with that.

Not in a “everything happens for a reason” kind of way. I don’t think I need to turn something awful into a life lesson to make it easier to talk about. I just know that forcing myself to keep reading about grief when I was already drowning in it wasn’t going to make me healthier, and it wasn’t going to make The Storystead better either. It wouldn’t be the suggestion I would give to my previous clients when I was a therapist either.

It also made me realize that we needed to grow beyond where we started.

Grief gave The Storystead a starting point, but it was never supposed to be the only thing here. There are so many reasons someone might go looking for a book. Maybe a child is dealing with anxiety or a new diagnosis. Maybe someone wants a character who looks like them or has a family like theirs. Maybe a teenager wants a book that makes them feel a little less weird or alone. Maybe a parent needs help finding a way into a difficult conversation. Maybe a reader wants to understand an experience they have never had themselves.

Or maybe somebody just wants a really good book.

All of that belongs here too.

The easiest way I can explain what I want The Storystead to become is that I want it to feel like a book community outside of a library.

I say that as someone who loves libraries, like a lot, a lot.

Yet access can still be complicated. Sometimes getting to a library is hard. Sometimes you don’t know what to ask for when you get there. Sometimes you know exactly the kind of book you need but have no idea what words to type into a search box. Sometimes you end up opening Goodreads, Amazon, publisher pages, blogs, library catalogs, and ten other websites just trying to answer what feels like one simple question.

I want The Storystead to make some of that easier.

I want someone to be able to come here looking for a book about an experience, a feeling, a type of representation, an age group, or a topic and have a useful place to start. I want parents to be able to use it without needing a degree in literature. I want it to still be useful to librarians, counselors, teachers, and other professionals. I want teenagers and regular readers to be able to understand it too.

Basically, I want the information to be good without making people work to understand it. That is still the goal.

So while I have been quieter, The Storystead has not been abandoned. I’ve been thinking a lot about what belongs here, how the database should work, how I want to review books, and what skills I need to get better at along the way. I’ve also just been taking care of myself, which needed to happen too. You need to make sure your spoons are also full.

Now I’m looking toward 2027, and honestly, I’m excited about it.

There are still going to be grief books. There are still going to be hard books. That part of The Storystead matters to me and always will. But there are also going to be challenged books, award-winning books, picture books, YA books, books about all kinds of experiences, reading projects, reviews, research, and hopefully some things that are just plain fun.

I’m also going to share more of what happens while I’m figuring all of this out. What I’m learning, what I try, what works, what absolutely does not work, and the things I change my mind about along the way. I sometimes feel like I made the mistake of believing I needed to get The Storystead “right” before I really started showing people the process.

I didn’t.

This project is about growth. Kids grow. Readers grow. Families grow. Our understanding of each other grows. The Storystead is going to grow too, and apparently so am I. We struggle. We make mistakes. We also sometimes do it right.

I still wish I were further along. I would love to be writing this with 100 books in the database instead of 10 or 15. But I also know my friend would want me to keep going. He believed in this when it was mostly me talking about all the things I hoped it could eventually become.

So I’m going to keep building it.

Maybe a little differently than I originally planned, but I think that’s okay. I hope you stick around and see all that is planned. There is a place for you, here with me.