My friend Ken has an amazing blog. I’ve always admired his ideas about being ‘mildly creative.’
Mildly creative. I love that phrase. How helpful and interesting. And what a completely un-mild idea.
Recently Ken’s been writing with honesty and openness about something that he hasn’t felt he could fully share before. I’m so grateful to him for this. When I read his post I felt moved beyond words.
Because here’s the thing. I edit myself too. We all do. In blogging, in other kinds of writing, in life.
Of course we do. We want to create beautifully-crafted pieces that show our best abilities and our best selves. Don’t we?
Which leads to a big question for me right now: Can we ever be truly ‘authentic’ online? (And what does that word ‘authentic’ even mean?)
Each of us changes the way that we speak, the way that we interact with people, often very subtly, depending upon the context in which we find ourselves. It seems to me a bit unhelpful and disingenuous to think that we don’t.
It can be so hard to let go of what we think we should be or how we want people to see us.
If like me, you’re a blogger with a background in a therapeutic field, the idea of self-disclosure gets even more complicated. I often ask myself: Should I really be sharing this? I’ve been trained to think very carefully about whether I should self-disclose or not, depending upon whether that’s helpful for my client.
I’ve come to the vague conclusion that, these days, when I live so much of my life online, the question Should I really be sharing this? is still a helpful yardstick for me. If I share this, is there something in it that might be useful in some way to others? Or am I just thinking about sharing this because I need to get my feelings out of me?
That’s not to say that I think that there’s anything wrong with blogging to express how we’re feeling. Blogging, like any kind of writing, can be a helpful kind of catharsis.
But perhaps, if we truly want to be of service to others, we need to talk about our personal experiences and our vulnerabilities in ways that are as helpful as possible to our readers.
There are many writers who do this beautifully. Jen Louden is wonderful at sharing her big questions with us. Susannah Conway asks: ‘Can we just be honest?’ Fabeku shares his love and asks us, gently, to savour our own. Amy Palko shares her fear. Amanda Oaks at Kind Over Matter shares what’s in her heart.
These writers inspire me because of their courage and generosity in sharing and writing about their vulnerabilities so that we can experience, question and grow with them. They don’t present their ideas as neatly packaged solutions. They talk about their ongoing, unfolding journey towards understanding something – and they invite us to join them in that process.
It can be hard to decide what and when to share. It can be terrifying to send your words and your feelings out into the world. But when we risk that sharing in our writing, and when our intentions for doing so are clear, the benefits for our readers can be huge.
Sometimes, I think, we’re at our very best when we choose not to (well, not completely, anyway) edit ourselves.
Love this post, Sophie. You are so right – it is difficult to share yourself openly. But it’s so worth pushing through that as your courage is always greatly rewarded.
A friend said to me recently that she’s always admired my openness, and I was quite taken aback, because sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve been all that open in my writing. It reminded me that we can be open in our writing without displaying everything – that openness in writing is partly being brave to share parts of yourself as openly as you can, and it’s partly the in the perception of your readers.
Oh, and I must say thank you for pointing me in the direction of so many more yummy posts to read – delicious!
Amy
xx
Thank you, Amy. I felt quite nervous about sharing this post – what would people think, etc, etc… I think that’s such a big part of writing anything and ‘putting it out there.’
Your honesty and courage always inspire me. x
Earlier this year I made a vow on my blog to be more open. Share some of the part of me that aren’t my work (ie, yoga + massage), share my writing, share my life. Writing about my health was very scary but opening up really helped and suddenly from out of the woodwork came a whole barrage of support I never knew I had. A very dear friend recently told me that reading my blog was like reading a lovely self-help guide to life and that made me cry (in a good way of course)!
I’ve just written the draft of my first post for Amy’s Time Traveler’s Wife project and I’ve shared something I’m still not sure about. I am determined to press publish tomorrow unedited now I’ve read this.
Thank you, so glad we have connected
Thank you so much, Rachel, for your openness about the difficulties with being and remaining ‘real’ and open in the writing we choose to share.
I love reading your blog too.
Flattered to be included here. And blushing a bit as my struggle is not to be honest so much as to be positive and useful. I like to process stuff, sometimes too much! I delete so many posts and parts of posts because they are whiny and victimy and do not serve. So how is that for honesty! This is such a vital conversation for our blog community, thank you for hosting it.
Oh, thank you so much for sharing that too, Jen.
Your willingness to ask questions and your invitation in your writing to share with you in some of your process has always been a huge source of help to me.
It’s also really helpful for me to know that you delete things and edit things. And I think that’s precisely why your posts are so helpful. Because you’re being open and *at the same time* also asking yourself: ‘Does this serve others? Thank you.
Hi Sophie. Being authentic, I must admit, this is the first of your blogs I’ve read. And continuing with my authenticity, I really enjoyed it! It got me thinking about why people blog and what’s their purpose for doing it. Is it really for the readers, or for them? How open to be is a big question. It strikes me that there is probably a high likelihood that if someone blogs, then they’re likely also to keep a diary. Perhaps a good measure of how much to share would be to benchmark the blog with the diary looking for those things that appear in one, but not the other? That would be the ultimate test of authenticity!
Hi Anthony, Thanks so much for reading and commenting and your kind words.
For me, blogging is quite different from keeping a private diary and what I write in a journal for myself is very different from something I decide to put ‘out there’ – however ‘real’ and transparent I try to be. I think people might be totally bored by most of my own private meanderings and musings and probably not find it useful at all. I’m also not sure how ‘authentic’ some of my private writing might be. I remember writing a diary when I was 12 in careful italic handwriting and in the style of Charlotte Bronte, for example. Oh, yes.
I’m interested in whether or how sharing my experience in my writing can be useful to others in some way. I think what’s important for me is intention – our intention to be of service and what we share of our sense of personal truth – rather than the degree of details and facts we choose to disclose. In one sense, everything we write is a kind of fiction. We’ve selected, shaped, crafted… In another sense, if our intention is clear, it’s a story that’s imbued with our own personal felt truth.
Thank you for being so open and honest. Ironically, my blog is one of the few places where I am least censored. I believe that is what truly allows us to connect with one another on a deeper level.
Alisha, thank you. I’ve just visited your site and blog. It’s wonderful. And I love the way that you give people opportunities to connect with your experience and lots of white space where they can read in their own truths and meanings.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the web and blogging can sometimes give us permission to be ourselves, to share things we wouldn’t perhaps share in real-time conversations?
One thing that interests me, though, is the idea that we’re always writing to someone. I think that we always have some sense of a reader, even if that reader is a part of ourselves. So can we ever be completely uncensored? Maybe when we free-write we can. But when we post something, give it away, put it ‘out there,’ aren’t we making decisions to some extent about how we do that? Im still thinking about all this. I don’t have the answers.
Thank you so much for joining the conversation and I really look forward to reading your blog posts.
I’ve been discussing at length recently this topic, loved how Susannah posed it.
I do believe that we must include the pieces that make us a bit uncomfortable because without it, if we only present a perfect picture, it does a dis-service to those reading and counting on us for inspiration.
I do not believe we can truly inspire others to reach their full amazing potential if we don’t explain that yes, I feel that too. I’ve been there, and this is what I”m doing. Here is how I am flipping it around.
I’m excited to continue this conversation, it is so needed.
Yes!
Thank you so much, Hannah. So happy and grateful that this spoke to you.
I’ve just been looking around your beautiful blog and really look forward to talking more with you.
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Just found this post from a link round-up and it really resonates with me.
My problem has actually been the opposite of not sharing enough – in general I am too open with what I write on my blog to the point that I am not comfortable telling anyone about it and that I am terrified of people I know discovering it. And I don’t like that at all. It could be cool to write a completely uncensored anonymous blog, but I think that all the secrecy is way too hard.
Now I sit down and just write whatever is on my mind. I read it over and ask myself if I would tell my grandmother and one of my guy friends the stuff that I have written – if it’s a yes, then it’s good to go. If I can edit out parts then I do, and if not then it goes into my journal instead.
I think it can be really difficult finding a balance between treating a blog as a journal and sharing enough that we can really connect with others.
Elle, thank you so much for reading and taking the time to comment.
I really like your system for checking in with yourself about what feels right for you.