Oversharer's Anonymous?

This week on Mom.me, I wrote a little bit about "oversharing", specifically, what my "code of content" is for sharing (life, love, opinions) in public forums after twenty years of doing so. It is quite possibly my most frequently asked question, mainly with people I interact with outside the Internet who don't understand what it is I do and why I do it. 

I have never known motherhood privately... I have gone through phases, coming of age (still working on that one, btw—it’s a lifelong goal of mine to become a fully fledged adult before I die) along side my children, my husband and various other people in my life who have been generous enough to let me share pieces of their stories, as well. I have experienced in this space a wealth of support, validation, criticism, hate, love, kindness, cruelty and everything else that exists in every other public space.

I have invited strangers into my home knowing full well the ramifications of doing so. I have written posts only to later delete them. I have posted photos only to realize later that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing them. I have posted photos of my body, shared videos of my birth, been overwhelmingly disagreed with, ridiculed, applauded, befriended, trolled, and all of the things I assume everyone who has ever shared openly has experienced...

Not that my "code" should be anything like yours (or anyone else's), but I think it's an important conversation to have, especially as our children come of age. (If we can't follow our own rules for appropriate social media use, how can we expect our kids to?)

I don’t always succeed at following my own code, but having some rules and regs firmly in my head has helped me navigate my place as a storyteller and parent within this space... 

...It is an often tricky subject to navigate because we all have different bodies and brains and hearts and ways of looking at the world—we filter differently, we go with different flows.

You can read the my entire post (including my little list), here. 

As always I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Are you active online/in social media? Do you have a code of content for what you are willing to post? Oh, and btw, we're working on a new comment system over at Mom.me that will be a little more inviting for commenters because, ideally, I would love to bring the conversations over to that space, instead. Standby for more on that and all the love. 

GGC