Hello there! Long time, no blog. I stepped away from blogging in 2018 – in my update post from January of that year I said my break would be roughly two weeks – but I truly did not intend for my break to be a year and a half long. I am returning to blogging because I genuinely enjoy it; I enjoy being a royal watcher, and I enjoy talking about the royals. But I want to make changes to the way I blog about the royals moving forward. I also want to explain why I took the break that I did.

Why I stepped away from blogging

From December 2015 through May 2017, I posted a blog post almost every single day. Through the end of 2017 I didn’t post as much as I had been, but in December I, again, posted almost every day. This burned me out. The constant churn of new blog posts made blogging not fun for me.

In addition to that, in the last 6 weeks or so of 2017, the commentary about Kate and Meghan became toxic for me. I was already dealing with negative mental health, and the negativity was exacerbating that and affecting my mental health outside of the blog. So I was already contemplating taking a break for a month or so in early 2018 to reevaluate how I wanted to continue with my blogs.

Then 2018 happened… and then 2019 happened. January 2018 to September 2019 has been the worst year and a half of my entire life. My life was dismantled and put back together – I had surgery, and then other medical problems; my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and had severe complications from surgery which was almost a year-long process to attempt to overcome, and then she ended up passing away anyway – it’s been a tremendously painful journey. There was so much negativity in my life already that I couldn’t handle any negativity that came with blogging about Kate and Meghan.

Changing priorities

When I started Kate Middleton Review back in 2013 (how has it been six years!), I did so with the idea that I was taking a more middle ground approach – being able to complement when I saw fit, but also calling out people when necessary. For years, whenever someone would call me on my negativity, I would claim that I was being constructive in my criticism – that my criticism was coming from a good place. It wasn’t. I was being as honest as I could be at the time with those people, but I wasn’t being honest with myself. If I’m being wholly honest: I criticized Kate because it made me feel good. And that’s not good.

But toward the end of 2017, I realized that a good chunk of the criticism leveled at Kate wasn’t backed up by any evidence; instead, it was purely based on negative bias. For example, claiming Kate wasn’t an involved mother because she has nannies and there is no evidence that she herself takes care of her kids… when there is also no evidence that Kate isn’t an involved mother. We only see a snapshot of their lives; we have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, or how much time Kate spends with her kids. But because of the negative bias against Kate, the lack of evidence was evidence that Kate was a bad mother.

The criticism I, myself, leveled at Kate over the years wasn’t constructive, because Kate wasn’t reading it. My readers were. And when I or others would harp on something Kate did, the people being affected were myself and my readers, not Kate.

I take full responsibility for the negativity I created and fostered in the past, and I want to move forward now and change how I discuss Kate and the other royals.

Moving forward

Moving forward, I want to be more positive in my life in general, and here on the blog specifically. I’ve reflected a lot on myself and the way I talked about Kate the last six years, and why I talked about her the way I did. I want to remove my own negative biases, and not harp on everything, especially when those things don’t matter – when I read an article about Kate’s engagement and half the comments are saying she looks like she’s in her 50s, it’s draining; and I fully realize that others may have felt the same way when I would continue to harp on things in that way.

On many topics, the internet seems to keep a very black and white mentality in a lot of areas, when really we think in shades of grey. One can think Kate needs to work more and also not condemn her for everything she does. I think it’s possible to say I dislike a dress without condemning Kate as a person. I think it’s possible to say I like a dress without condoning everything Kate and the Middletons do.

Though I have not been actively involved, from the moments I have paid attention, I’ve seen so much negativity in the royal watching community the last couple of years, and I want to step away from that and focus on what I enjoy about being a royal watcher: the history, the fashion, the jewelry.

What’s next

I want to manifest the changes I’ve been thinking about, and get back into blogging. I won’t be publishing every day, but I will try to post at least once a week if not more – the royals’ schedules dictate a lot of that, to be honest.

The immediate schedule planned is covering the various appearances Kate has made in September – I know she had one today, and then there were a couple others as well. I plan to have a post up over the weekend, and into next week catching up on the September events.

Over the years on this blog, I expanded my coverage to include so many other royals beyond Kate. I’m scaling that back. I mostly want to focus on Kate, but I do love covering the Swedish royals so I will continue to cover them at times as well. I also loves tiaras, so tiara events are a must cover. I will be covering Meghan over on Meghan Markle Review, which I am also re-launching.

I am not allowing comments at this time. I do not have the mental capacity, nor the time, to properly moderate comments. I enjoy the communal nature of royal watching, so eventually I am hoping to turn comments back on, but for now I have to do what’s best for me and the readers/commenters – if I can’t properly moderate comments, then that’s not good for anyone commenting.

I am leaving the archives up and active, as, while I have changed my opinions on so many things over the years, I find the archives fascinating as little snapshots of thoughts and opinions from those times. More than anything, they show me how much I’ve changed.

Conclusion

To anyone still reading, I greatly appreciate it. I hope there is a place on the internet for me, and I hope some of you come along for the ride – you can subscribe to the blog below to receive emails when I post new articles. I have also updated my About page, so you take a look at that as well.

I haven’t been the greatest at replying to emails in the past, but I intend to be better moving forward. If you have any questions or concerns, or just want to drop a comment, please feel free to email me at katemiddletonreview@gmail.com.

Thank you for reading! Have a wonderful day!

KMR