Its a digital world. We can try to deny it, but is there really any point anymore? How many smart phones are out there? How many apps for sharing pictures?
Its a digital world where we can share information and photos instantly, and permanently.

Permanently. I’m a grown adult and I honestly still have a hard time wrapping my head around it, about what it really means when you share something online. Especially when it is shared publicly.

As I write this and put these words out there I don’t know what will happen to them, who will read them, copy them, share them, save them, change the context and switch up my words. And I am only talking about words, I haven’t even started in on photos!

Now clearly I am on social media! I have Facebook, a page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, this blog of course, and the list goes on for apps and such.

I share photos almost daily. I share my thoughts, my hopes and dreams, my fears, my battles and even my heartbreak. I’m a mom and a lot of what I share involves my motherhood journey. I have 4 beautiful children, 14, 10, 9 and 3 years old who I love dearly, I am so proud of all of them and would love to shout it from the mountain tops all day every day. Here’s the catch, I do not share their photos. I don’t share photos that show their beautiful sweet faces and I try not to write about them on a personal level. This is a personal decision that each parent must make in our digital world, and this is what I decided was best for us.

But wait? What was that?! Yes I can hear you asking “But you’re a mom and a blogger?! You’re a mom blogger? How can you just not share? Go on, just ask them first, if they say yes, its all fair game.”

So let me try to explain.

I do not believe that my children at their ages can fully and completely understand would it would mean for me to share their photos and their personal stories.

Can you imagine if the internet was around like this when you were little? Can you imagine at 13, 16, or 18 years old finally getting a Facebook account, finally getting online and seeing that your whole life was written out for the world to see from someone else’s perspective. Every milestone, every ribbon you won, pictures of everything, baby photos, you naked on the toilet, the list goes on. But there is also the bad, the embarrassing photos and stories. Your most vulnerable moments, your weakest moments, all of them told from someone else’s point of view. They may have been written out of love, so your mom could relate and bond with other moms. But that doesn’t matter, because these moments are moments you didn’t want to share, not like that.
So take it all in, that all that information is out there, and then realize that it is not just you reading it. Friends, family, and strangers read everything and see all the photos. Commenting on it all, sharing it, coping and saving photos and stories about you.
People have learned things about you that you would rather they not know. People have heard things about you, they think they know you, but they don’t, because it wasn’t you telling them.

Its harder to create your own voice, show the world the real you when someone else has written and shared you from their point of view for your whole life.

My kids are their own persons. Their stories are their own and theirs alone to write and share how they see fit.

I’m walking a fine line sharing me without sharing them when they are such a huge part of me.

I wouldn’t want anyone else writing my story and so I won’t write theirs.

So for now I will keep my kids stories for them to write, and maybe one day they will write them and I can share them.

And honestly, can I just say thank goodness social media wasn’t around when I was growing up. The ups and downs I had?! I wouldn’t want that shared with the world from someone else’s point of view.

~ Michelle