Happy Birthday to the MMM Blog!

by Nadia Ramoutar     MMM Communications Coordinator                  Ireland                      05.10.2022

When I was hired to be the Communications Coordinator for the MMMs, my first focus was to re-do the website. This was an extensive project as the MMMs do many things globally and it was almost impossible to capture all of this for our online presence. It was a much bigger job than I hoped.

I was fortunate that MMM Sr Sheila Campbell was also assigned to work in Communications. She is a nurse by training but has held many roles in her 50 years plus as an MMM. She is bright, witty, warm – and very direct. Side-by-side we slowly built the new website and rewrote the content along with a team of tech people. It was like building a house with a fork, slow and not always productive. We did our best and eventually, we had a bright and shiny new website.

A website is never done. It is never finished. It is like a child that has to be nurtured and cared for day in and day out. If there is nothing new on a website it is doomed. In my vast experience with media and communications, I knew that an MMM Blog area would be a vital area to keep people coming to our site. I also had the glorious experience of knowing the MMM Sisters from around the world. I loved hearing their stories and tales of incredible things they did with the casualness of going to the dry cleaners to pick up a suit. Nothing was a big deal and nothing they did was every considered special or important. They are amazing women and I wanted to share their stories with the world.

One day, I went into Sr Sheila’s office and I told her that I wanted her to start writing a blog for the new website.

“That’s fine,” she replied dutifully as she always does. “But what’s a blog?”

In the year since then, Sr Sheila has become a blog expert. She not only knows what a blog is but she is helping other people not just to read our blogs but to also write blogs too. It as if she has taken to blog writing like a fish to water. Now, blog writing is such a part of her life, I can’t imagine her not writing blogs.

Sr Sheila, like most MMMs is far too modest to write this blog so I am doing it for her. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for trusting me that Blog writing was her calling. She nurtures and cares for the blogs like a gardener with prize roses. She gives them such loving care. Without fail, we have three new blogs a week on our website. We post the links on social media and we know now that in the past year since we started we have only 100,000 readers or “hits” as Sr Sheila will now say using the lingo!

In her time preparing to become this Blog Guru, Sr Sheila found out that her brother had written blogs as a Jesuit for a long time. So it must be somehow in the blood. She takes great effort to squeeze in Blog writing amidst all the many other things she does each day. I am in awe of her ability to focus in our department where there are always at least four things happening at once.

Sr Sheila and I have actually been invited to give a webinar about blogging. We love it so much that we are excited to share this passion without people and get them blogging.

I have laughed, cried and questioned things while reading our MMM blogs. I have learned about people and places I didn’t know. I have written myself and found great joy in sharing stories about random and relevant things. My sisters eating all our easter eggs as a child has now gone into infamy because of my Easter blog. Maybe you will see it again next year if Sr Sheila gives it another publication. We will see. She has a lot of options with so many great bloggers joining us. I just want to say thank you to the bloggers who joined us this year, thank you to the readers – but most of all thank you to Sr Sheila who now knows exactly what a blog is!

Happy 1st birthday to our Baby Blog site! Thank you for the joy you have brought to thousands and thousands of people around the world.