I’m going to start this post with a bit of a disclaimer. I’ve been trying to write this for… a while. I have a few versions sitting in drafts where I had started and stopped writing it. It’s kind of hard to explain, and I’ll do my best, but I warn that it won’t be super eloquent…. but here we go:
There are plenty of challenging things about social media and documenting my life on the internet. When I first started (almost thirteen years ago!), I never could have imagined that people would read what I was writing…. let alone having it become my career. I love it, but it’s also come with some difficult things to navigate, which could be an entire thesis, honestly. But one particular challenge came to light recently and I felt like it was important enough to bring up.
Can I (or anyone on social media) accurately share what’s going on in real time? While this may seem like I’m talking about geo-tagging a restaurant while you’re still there… but what I really mean to say is if it’s possible to meaningful share what you’re experiencing as you’re experiencing. Particularly tougher times.
When I gave birth to Jack, I was experiencing everything. Overall, it was such a beautiful period of time, but it wasn’t particularly easy. Eventually I was able to share what it felt like and what I went through immediately following giving birth, but I could barely process it while it was happening to me, let alone put what I was feeling into words to share. Plus, there was already an intense vulnerability of just giving birth that further exposing myself before I was ready to would have been even more detrimental.
So I waited. Until I felt like I was out of the thick of it. Until I felt like I could personally process what happened. And until I could articulate it in a way that was meaningful, and hopefully helpful for someone else.
At the time, I actually felt a lot of external pressure from readers, as much as I tried to block it out, to be sharing everything, especially the harder parts. I was getting kind of inundated with DMs from other women telling me they were unfollowing me because my experience wasn’t lining up with their postpartum experience or comments about my unrealistic portrayal of newborn life.
Nothing that I shared was inaccurate– I loved it. I was going for walks and getting out of the house and trying to soak up every minute of that delicious newbornness that I knew wouldn’t last forever. My heart felt so filled to the brim with a kind of love I didn’t know existed. But, as I would imagine any new mom, I was also in a bit of survival mode. Even now, looking back, I have to dig around my memory for the harder parts but they’re definitely there. Being terrified of nighttime, worrying about my own healing, experiencing D-MER without having a word for it yet.
Again though, I was in the thick of it! That survival mode was running in overtime and I knew I wasn’t capable of stopping to reflect yet. I knew I was eventually going to be able to come up for air so to speak and that there would be a point where I could share what I went through.
Personally, I needed to be out of it first.
Even the origin story for my blog is rooted in this idea. When I started my blog in December of 2008, I was still in a pretty horrible time of my life. I had just finished my first semester of college, where I had nearly failed a class (I ultimately got a D) and felt like the world was ending. College was not what I expected and I was, frankly, miserable. My blog became my lifeline. But if you were to go back and read those early posts, you’d have no idea that I was basically at rock bottom. Whenever I have written about a difficult thing I’ve gone through, it’s always when I’m on the other side.
There are still things in my life I’m currently in the middle of, processing, or simply not ready to talk about. Maybe I never will be? I actually think that it’s okay. Sure it’d make for great “content,” but I’ve been doing this far too long to exploit my real life without thinking things through!
No one is owed anything, honestly. And it’s a good reminder (for me, too) that you really don’t know what someone is going through behind the scenes. Even if they’re sharing some things or they share something, you might not know everything or the extent of it. It’s okay if they share down the line. It’s okay if they only share what they’re comfortable sharing, even if that means nothing at all. It’s also okay, as a consumer of content, to unfollow and mute if that is what will serve you best. I think we know that Instagram/social media is a highlight reel, but it’s still hard to constantly remind yourself of that. I have been in this game as a creator for over a decade and I’ve personally not shared hard moments and bad times myself and I still forget that other people are probably doing the same thing.
