I Truly Feel The Things That Happen To Me Before I Share My Story

There is something I am learning about right now, as the amount of eyes on my work grows.

I have gone from 1,000 to over a 100,000 + followers on my combined social media accounts in the last year or two.

For me, I write the same content and it’s the same dance with my pen—but the audience size is undeniably different and that creates different reactions in some of my personal relationships.

I hear it in small comments like, “I don’t want 38,000 people to see that photograph of me in my bikini” to requests for me to entirely take down articles I have published.

To sensitive comments from ex boyfriends when I share break up poems—because they were part of the story of my life and people know these poems are about them.

It is such a dance.

Staying true and sharing art without censorship and also honoring people’s feelings and the timing of doing the sharing.

Especially with social media being a “now” environment.

What are you doing NOW?

Share it NOW!

Now. Now. Now.

One of my rules is that I don’t share something until I have processed it.

I think that when we are still processing something that we are influenceable. We are still vulnerable in it and the outside world and especially 100,000 people talking about it can sway us and change our process.

Hell even our friends or mom saying, “That’s a stupid business idea, don’t do it” can sway us when we are in a process or an idea.

My rule of thumb I have adopted from many self growth courses and my own personal experience is if something big is happening or happened or a lesson or insight, sit in it for 5 days.

I just be in it — alone.

I don’t ask for permission, validation, feedback I just sit in it and see how it makes me feel.

If it’s even a bigger thing—I wait 30 days to share it with this world.

When I wrote my article on my experience within abortion I wrote it, read it, and put it away and didn’t think about it for 30 days and then revisited it.

I asked “why” of sharing and after it felt good and in alignment I submitted it for publication.

As a nonfiction writer who writes 98% of the time primarily about my life and the people I meet I sometimes struggle in when something is happening, to not share it.

To know that it’s okay to lay in a bathtub, crying till 2 am and write 20 poems and NOT share those with this world.

To be crippled in grief and heartache and not share it.

That’s it’s okay to WAIT to announce something or someone and give it time to build and grow.

That it’s alright to write heartbreak, and not share that heart break till it has healed.

I am always so excited to share my art and poems as I think the human experience, regardless of what human it is coming from is incredibly invaluable.

I think we heal in knowing we are not alone in our experiences and I think hearts break in circles every second of the day.

Almost everybody I know has grieved someone they love.

Everybody has been dumped or done the dumping.

Most of us have been rejected.

Grief, and heartbreak and loss and success and love are the human experience and there will always be a market and demand for people to hear of what they too, know.

Because, connection—it’s why we are here.

To be connected in our successes and our sorrows.

That being said there is a balance and a dance of sensitivity to fresh hearts, broken hearts and hearts falling in love.

There is a dance of knowing the world will always benefit from hearing certain words, or seeing certain words and just… waiting a little.

My work right now as a writer is knowing that it’s okay to not share ALL the time, ALL of the things.

I have been practicing that this month.

I have written many things that are staying private, for my own heart and for others.

Yesterday I wrote 15 poems in a bathtub, and didn’t share them, and I might not share them until the make it into one of the many books I am putting together.

It isn’t because I am not comfortable sharing the slabs of my heart, it is just about timing of when it happens.

It is not censorship, it’s sensitivity to the process—both others and my own.