Last week, I shared a personal piece of writing on my Facebook page, and perhaps you were wondering what it was like to make that decision.
Have you ever seen a squirrel start to cross the road, panic, go back, try again, see a car coming, panic again, and then turn around in small circles until the driver leans on the horn and shocks it into scrambling the rest of the way?
That’s what it was like.
That essay was the first time a publication said yes to my writing, and it was a big deal. Getting a yes came with a sense of validation, of moving in the right direction, of chiseling a couple flakes off that giant block of impostor syndrome I keep strapped to my back.
But it was also a big deal because I submitted it in the first place.
I’m about a year in at this point, and I suppose it’s time to tell you that other than these blog posts, I’ve been hoarding my work. Short stories and essays are piling up in my Google Drive like tin Pepsi signs in a Hoosier garage. Perhaps other people would enjoy them, too, but they’re just so much safer with me, nestled under two full layers of authentication and some semi-feral cats.
Turns out being an undersharer in my personal life also extends to my creative life. Like all undersharers, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that the more of myself I show, the faster you will back yourself into a nearby row of shrubbery. Or, worse, the faster you will weaponize what I’ve shown you and send me diving into the boxwoods myself.
That makes writing a little tricky. Getting the words on the page is fun, but when it comes to hitting that publish button, I have to manage the same small case of hives every Friday morning before I can bring myself to click.
When the opportunity came, I very much wanted to write that essay about God and feminism and my daughter’s birth. I just didn’t necessarily want anyone to read it.
It took quite a few fits and starts, after the piece was finally published, to work up the nerve to share the link. I couldn’t sleep, and I walked around with a stomach ache for about three days—both of which seem to be reliable indicators that I need to do something. There were divine nudges. There was anger and bargaining, depression and acceptance. And there was a lot, I mean a LOT, of encouragement from my therapist.
Kind people always ask how the writing is going, and I always say it’s going great, but I usually don’t want to explain why. Part of that is undersharing, of course, but the rest is that I measure my wins by a different metric than I used to, and it’s not exactly what they’re telling us on Shark Tank.
Now I’m just interested in what makes me grow.
I already know what it’s like to accumulate pieces of paper that tell you you’re crushing it professionally. That was nice, but it doesn’t seem necessary to repeat that experiment just because I shifted my spot a few steps over.
Today, the writing is going great because I told you about what I wrote. Then I told you how scared I was to tell you about it, and both of those stretched me like a good pigeon pose before breakfast.
The writing is going great because I was afraid you’d hate it and I was afraid you’d leave, and I decided the solution to that wasn’t for you to like it or for you to stay. The solution wasn’t for YOU to do anything at all.
It was for me to share the thing, to see my fears either realized or evaporated, and to discover that I would survive both.
Ultimately, I shared it—and I submitted another story this morning—because I am done being bossed around by my fear.
In this half of my life, I wish to have only one boss, and that’s the still, small voice that, despite my best efforts, keeps shoving me further toward myself. It is harder to hear than the gibbering, feces-throwing primate of my mind, but it’s always truer. And it’s telling me to stop making myself small.
Some friends have told me I’m brave for writing, and I’d like to disabuse us all of that notion right now. I am, to my very core, a coward. But that’s great news! It means that if I can occasionally unzip my chest and show you the vibranium core that keeps me alive, there’s space in your life, somewhere, with someone, to do the same.
And that’s a small part of how we’re going to save the world. One undersharer sharing at a time.
So whether you loved it, hated it, or ignored it, thanks for witnessing this moment of extreme discomfort. I trust that it’s healing me, and that maybe a little of it will ricochet into whatever needs healing in you, too.
GOOD.