Novelist Ayelet Waldman's Blog Saved Her Life

Posted on March 22, 2005

Novelist Ayelet Waldman (author of the Mommy Track mysteries) has launched a firestorm of controversy about the ethics of blogging with her first new column for Salon. Entitled "Living Out Loud -- Online," the article discusses the author's bipolar disorder and how blogging saved her life.

Waldman writes, "When I started blogging, I discovered a compulsive need to open the tattered edges of my emotional raincoat and expose the nasty parts beneath. But at what cost to my kids?" She says she posted everything from what her children ate to funny things they said. She also blogged about her bipolar disorder.

Her husband, novelist Michael Chabon, read her blog while on a book tour and realized his wife was suicidal. He called friends, who intervened and forced her to call her doctor, who immediately realized her medication needed adjusting. Waldman describes her emotional pain, her son's fear that she would commit suicide, and how her openness in her blog violated her children's privacy.

Letters have been pouring in to Salon as readers alternatively praise and denounce Waldman's forthrightness. It's a thought-provoking piece.