Stephanie Nielson, a native to Utah, had a very successful Mormon mommy blog called The Nie Nie Dialogues (named after herself, StephaNIE NIElson.) Many people loved her wit and humor. She was a young mother who was not afraid of speaking her mind. However, her mind was always full of nothing but love for her life, family, and the crazy things that they dealt with every day. Then, her blog posts stopped. Beloved readers began to wonder and worry why their consistent and witty blogger had suddenly stopped writing. Soon they found out. On September 6th, 2008, Stephanie along with her Husband had been in a terrible plane crash. Both were in bad shape and burned, but Stephanie had the worst wounds. She had burned 80 % of her body. While her readers waited for her and wondered about her condition, Stephanie underwent many surgeries, skin grafts, and therapy.
During this time, followers of the blog wrote in to show their support and fill the empty blog post spaces. This audience is mainly made up of people in the same life style as Stephanie, 20-40 year old mothers. Since each follower is experiencing similar family and life stories, they were easily able to come up with posts and re-posts of topics that were appealing to the whole Nie Nie Dialogue community. When the readers come to the blog and read something that they find that they had to deal with recently, they feel as if they’re not alone. The blog helps them to realize that there are other people dealing with the same things, and they are all working towards the great purpose of raising a happy family.
In Stephanie’s post “15 Steps” she exemplifies her use of humor, reality, and love so readers can easily relate their lives to hers. The powerful use imagery, tone, irony, and other forms of figurative language enable her to accomplish the mutual goal between writer and reader of getting through life by sharing stories.
The most relatable form of writing to Stephanie’s readers is her natural and genuine humor. It seems as if she can’t help but find the funny parts of every situation in her life. In the second post she wrote after returning from her accident, there is a list of 15 steps she now must do every morning. Some of them seem like they would be unbearable to deal with, such as dressing and undressing her extremely tender wounds. Yet, when reading the post, followers somehow still find the joy that Stephanie expresses in all of her writing. This is exemplified in step three of her morning, “Take out mouthpiece (it usually smells awesome).” Needing to wear a mouthpiece to bed sounds absolutely awful. To worry just about keeping a mouthpiece in the proper position all night would be annoying in itself, but to have to worry about it on top of worrying about burn care and medicine and children and a husband would seem unbearable. Yet when she does think about it, she automatically writes about the humor in it. It really does smell awful. She realizes that, knows that other people can relate to that, and thus a humorous situation is created.
Sarcasm is a strong component of Stephanie’s humor. It is used mainly to make boring, mundane, or awful times seem more light-hearted. With the mouth piece, for instance, she describes how it “smells awesome.” Everyone clearly knows that a mouthpiece that has been in a mouth overnight will not smell good the next day. However, because it was given a lighter tone, it makes the awful situation humorous.
Step number eleven of her morning describes how she must do the most basic of human functions in complicated ways, “Wobble like a hundred year old man (or c-3po-however you see it)
to raised toilet seat… fun!” Some people would write this point in a way that could be imagined as being extremely difficult and painful, but she describes it only to show people how funny it can be. Her blog followers love to read these precious humorous parts because it enables them to find the humor in their realities.
A key component to her humor is her use of imagery in describing the funny situations. When describing the walk to the bathroom, it can only be imagined in a humorous way. She gave two examples of what the walk looked like so that any reader could imagine exactly how she had to walk down the hallway. This part of her morning routine could easily be described in a different way that would give different imagery and make the situation not nearly as funny.
Stephanie does not cover up reality. This is a huge part of what makes her blog so relatable and popular. People don’t like hearing about perfection or made up facts. She tells her life stories exactly the way they happen. This means that while she does find the best in her life, she must also relate the harder times she experiences. “Cry/pray.” It would be easy for her to leave out the crying, but Stephanie knows her readers better. They need to hear that other mothers cry as often as they do. Dealing with the needs of each individual family member can cause a mother to cry frequently. When Stephanie relates her teary experiences, it makes readers feel like they are dealing with their lives the same way everyone else is, and that their struggles are not only overwhelming to them.
Stephanie doesn’t talk about her crying to keep readers; she talks about it because it happens. She is not trying to hide anything about her life. The tone she uses in describing the sadder parts of her life is completely genuine. There is also a resounding genuine tone. Through every aspect of her writing, there is love.
Readers come to Stephanie’s blog to be reminded that life is funny, and there are good times and hard times, but the only thing that can hold life together is love. A reoccurring theme in this blog post along with others is the love of her religion. In this post alone she talks about praying three specific times to get her through just her morning routine. She later says that to get through the rest of her rigorous day, much more praying goes on. This demonstrates her love for God, and her dependence on Him to get her through the painful and happy times of her day.
This love and devotion of religion translates to her complete love and devotion to her family. When describing her new and hard daily routine, Stephanie does tell the funny parts about how her family helps, but she never lets her appreciation for them go unsaid. There is not a single instance where she complains about how her children attempted but failed to help her. She never says that her family members don’t do enough for her. Love is the only underlying tone when she describes how her family is adjusting to their new way of living along with her. This tool of unconditional love without complaint is an example to how readers can live their own lives. The example of happiness and unconditional love helps them to know that they can achieve that same happiness in their family lives.
“15 Steps” showcases perfect examples of why readers come back to The Nie Nie Dialogues. They can relate to Stephanie, and they can all participate in the comradery of getting through motherhood while cherishing every moment of it.
