I used to share more of myself with the online world . When my kids were smaller it was easier to construct a narrative that I liked, and showed an angle of my life that pleased me. If I’m honest, it was also easier to construct a narrative that looked pleasing to the people I was sharing it with.
I don’t judge myself harshly for that.
My Instagram and Facebook feeds from that time are a testament to feelings of gratitude. The pictures are lovely. They’re well lit. It doesn’t seem like it rained much back then, or that we went places that were average, or beaches that were a bit meh. Of course, in reality, all those things were part of our experience – I just chose not to share them with the world. I shared the shiny bits – the bits that were cute, that made me feel love and gratitude for my lot in life – the bits that lifted me up and made me feel hopeful about the world - the bits that spoke to parts of myself that I liked and valued.
But these days I feel less assured about what I want to share. This uncertainty is of course influenced by having older children who have their own online personas, and have strong feelings about what, if anything, gets shared about them in public.
And I respect that.
And struggle with that.
And everything in between.
I also feel more cognizant of my reasons for sharing. I think about that a lot more than I used to. I second guess more, and share a lot less. I’m more aware of the impact my sharing might have on others.
And while there is good reason for this (see above), and some solid values behind these choices, it also means I’m less open, and I definitely hold back from taking creative risks.
I get that ‘sharing’ is a ridiculously broad term that encompasses the innocuous and the profound, the boastful and the beautiful.
Without sharing we wouldn’t have novels, art, and music. The world would undoubtedly be worse without this kind of sharing. There is magnificent power in the audacity of sharing your creative vision with the world. Something so exquisitely vulnerable about putting your shit out there, maybe to acclaim, but simultaneously risking criticism, or worst of all, radio silence.
However, the social media age has also opened up a whole new democratised paradigm of sharing, where motivations can be complex, and the creative rubs alongside the transactional. Self-expression becomes hard to unpick from that which is self-serving.
But fundamentally, if we’re sharing in online spaces, we’re in the creative process. We’re (more or less consciously) creating a narrative about who we are, or more often, how we’d like to be seen.
And if that’s the case, then I’m a bit creatively blocked. When my kids were little, and my life looked a certain way, there was a narrative I felt comfortable sharing. There were these three cute little boys, often on beaches, making adorable (yet insightful) comments about the world - unconcerned about their online identity, happy to allow me to curate whatever story I wanted about their existence.
Appropriately, they are evolving, and so am I. We’re collectively getting older. We’re collectively asking more nuanced and complex questions about who we are becoming, and how we want the world to see us. Admittedly they’re approaching this shift with more teen/tween angst, and I am flailing around in the no-man’s land of my early 40’s. But none of us seems to have landed anywhere.
In our family life in 2020, independence abounds - denying me any sense of a linear narrative that I can share with the world. Experimentation (wise and otherwise) is always in the air – life is unpredictably vibrant – each day a new opportunity to be humbled by some new parenting challenge, but also to grow.
Life probably felt every bit as messy when the kids were small. In fact, I have a whole back catalogue of blog posts that can attest to this fact. The key difference is that it no longer feels as easy, or as appropriate, to share in the way I used to.
Just as they have done every day since they showed up in my life, they are requiring me to keep transforming. They stretch my emotional reserves, and they demand that what I share with the world alters and expands to make way for them.
This started as a post about sharing, and the stories we tell about ourselves. It’s become a post about parenting. Or perhaps its just about growth.
Like I said, I don’t have a linear narrative these days.