Let’s Go Digging!
I am old enough to say that before Facebook, there was another world of socializing and dating apps, which, to successfully use them we had to divulge personal information about ourselves. Like honey for bees, these were some of the spaces where people swarm to connect in the evolving, mysterious, and exciting world of communal digital socializing. Though some of you will have to conduct an archeological dig through your memory to remember those good ole days, I will share that my personal favorites were BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), MySpace, AOL, and Hi5.
Don’t Go Hiding Yet
I am not alone in this embarrassing time travel! Some of you reading this can share some stories which would make this generation’s jaw drop. But don’t you worry! You are safe in your internal flashback. Although, I could almost sense your reaction as specific memories which you tucked away, never to reveal, are flooding to the foremost of your mind. I will admit it for us! Back then, we didn’t know what we were doing, we just rolled with the flow hoping that our attempt to reveal interesting things about ourselves would land and stick somewhere in the cyber world. Oh and yes, lead us to our soul mate just like the ads said it would. That’s another blog for another day!
The Invasion
Today, we veterans of social media have to unlearn and re-learn how to survive in the ever expanding world of Social Media. Places like Facebook, which was only for college age people, are in a never ending tussle with those who have ownership of privacy in that space. You and I are part of this tussle. Our college years made us accepted residents of Facebook until we got older and those little kids we babysat turned 13 and are now trolling us with their own account. All of a sudden they are not just in our business at home, they are in our business online too! As comical as it may seem, things got real when we became the “older” demographic. The true Hunger Games began when our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors, landed on the app and sent us what first caused joy in our hearts but now dread…a friend request. The freedom of openness on Facebook came to a screeching halt. We had two options, decline their requests and all others in our nosey village or accept their requests and share only the nature pics or “nice” things happening around us.
We Found an Escape!
We found an escape which now seems to be the modeling for the evolving door of those apps. Facebook had become hostile territory and was not monitored by the newly erected, binocular carrying, neighborhood pentagon. Twitter and Instagram were the lifeboats we needed to escape from that non-private space into private ones. In these new spaces, we could share how or what we were doing, without the real time text or calls from our parents asking us why we posted what we posted. A real life example was when I posted on a Friday afternoon that I was enjoying time with friends, in less than five minutes after clicking send, one of my aunts texted me “isn’t it your Sabbath?” This aunt does not have a Facebook account.
Real Time Updates
To be honest, the issue was not only the cohabitation of generations in this space but the frequency of conclaves held by invisible private detectives who lived to bring report about us. Before the freedom to post anything on our statues, Facebook navigated what we wrote by beginning the updates for us. We were trapped into only writing statuses that begin with action verbs. Latoya is this or that. I think we should thank the think tanks over there for obliterating that status jail cell and giving us the freedom to write what we want. Why? Real-time updates were becoming increasingly dangerous to us who loved to live in the moment.
The Catch – Sharing vs Oversharing
Here is the catch. As much as that freedom was good, it also came with the downpour of posting beyond the short updates about our lives.
“Years ago, “status” was a measure of someone’s social or professional standing. Then Facebook began asking users to post updates on their thoughts or activities, and “updating your status” suddenly meant more than just moving to a better neighborhood. To prompt updates, Facebook first asked users, “What are you doing right now?” When that produced too many mundane reports – “Sally is eating toast!” – Facebook changed the update question in 2009 to the broader, “What’s on your mind?”” Brandon Griggs
The boundaries of words we first had, turned into an open gate allowing the downpour of just too much information (TMI), whether it was solicited or not. In other words, the era of oversharing had arrived, gifting to the world, front row tickets to read, interpret, pray about, re-share, gossip, and judge every detail of our lives.
The Side Effect
This is where it became personal for me and I hope that there are lessons to learn from my journey to detachment from social media. I soon became a guru on these sites because my jobs in the media world included managing social media sites for clients. At one point I was managing seven other sites, not including my own personal and artist pages. I can honestly say that I became an addict from just the sheer amount of time I was spending engaging with others, trying to keep the algorithms in my client’s favor. The fuel of interaction and likes on all those pages converted into more business for me but created in me, a paid, time consuming monster without any concept of boundaries. I began to share everything about my life there.
As with any unhealthy behavior, I didn’t know it and was defensive when it was pointed out to me. One example was when a former boss shared with me that if he wanted to know what was happening in my life, he didn’t need to ask me, he just needed to check Facebook. He then began to let me know that my marriage was over and how I felt it. Of course I told him that he was speculating but looking back at those Facebook memories, I can tell you that he was right. Those Facebook memories are a double edged sword cutting through our hearts with both the good and hard times we went through. They reminded me of who I was with, the exact situation, how I was feeling, and when I got over it. I was an unchecked roller coaster of emotions and Facebook gave me the stage to be safe and trauma dump simultaneously.
Freedom through Grieving
Oversharing was a cry for validation and acknowledgment, that the pain was not a hoax, but a true fissure, fragmenting my sensory outputs and confusing my heart, emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. I had to, through the deconstruction of my trauma and reconstruction of a more whole me, learn that there is a difference between transparency, vulnerability, and oversharing. Oversharing was a trauma response and many who are trapped in that cycle don’t know that they are trapped. This behavior did not begin to end until I began healing from the root of my pain. I did that by accepting difficult conversations, God and therapy. Then God and therapy taught me the art of grieving. Jamie Anderson, author of Doctor Who, shared this painful yet beautiful thought on grief.
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
Finding Help and Healing
It is still a bit uncomfortable sharing the journey with grief. I had to maneuver through those phases of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance of my lies, and somehow give permission for God’s truth to renew and revive me. It was a rough journey, digging out my pain, sometimes multiple times around the same experience, and in weird and confusing orders. It was a journey of accepting that grief is one of the byproducts of risking to experience and personally meet this gift called LOVE. I am not speaking about romantic love, that kind has moods and can leave you wanting more. I am speaking about LOVE in its truest essence and in its most sacrificial form, working in all spaces and places helping and healing people who are broken from just experiencing life. The truth of it is still hard to fully understand that God is LOVE and Love is God. He said ‘I Love You,” by making himself vulnerable, and embracing shame for you and me! One of my mentors, Pastor Bonita Shields shared this C.S. Lewis quote with me. I still read it with one eye open because it invokes deep emotions.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
Help for my pain is found in the Love of God. Healing from our pain is also found in the Love of God but can take many shapes, forms and length of time for individuals. The goal is to begin the healing journey. Please, begin your healing journey! The sooner we begin, the sooner we feel freedom from our pain. Through therapy and difficult conversations about trauma, I gained these keys to unlock grief’s prison. These steps helped turn the tables for me.
- Surrendering to God – I desperately try to safeguard my pain but I am the least qualified to handle my brokenness.
- Prayer – At Jesus’ feet is the truest and safest place to pour out all my cares and the emotions which come with them. 1 Peter 5:7
- Finding My True North – Standing in the transformational honesty of my trauma in my life, empowers me to move towards the truth of who God says I am
- Grieving – Facing what trauma had stolen from me, feeling all the emotions it birthed and grieving that loss, helps me to face reality instead of the fantasies of what “would have,” “should have,” “could have,” “must have,” and “might have” been.
- Leaning on Love – Pheww…I don’t know about you but this amphiboly is the bane of my existence. Because of sin, Love comes as a two sided experience. As a believer I must believe that Love is GOD and GOD is Love. 1 John 4:8-16. Love experiences the fullness of joy (with us) and Love experiences the fullness of pain (for us). Moreover, we are called to love as God loves and the gift is shared experiences with Him. For us to Love we risk hurt but also for us to Love we must be open to experience “joie de vivre,” the joy of living.
- Trusting in God – Trusting Him with all of my experiences means believing that He will make it make sense. In my classroom I have a piece of decoration which says Life is a Mixed Tape. I got it because it reminded me of this quote by Rob Sheffield from his book Love is a Mix Tape;
“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with; Nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”
Although I appreciate Sheffield’s message, I love and cling to God’s messages even more. Messages such as this one written by the Apostle Paul;
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
- Acceptance – This is the hard one. Surgery is needed. I have to separate the venom of life experiences. Then I give them to God in order for me to be open to the wisdom that experience wants to teach me. This is hard because our pride needs a reason to stay angry. The type of anger which eats us up from the inside out. Don’t get me wrong, anger without vengeance is permissible Ephesians 4:26. But anger and unforgiveness which stay unchecked, carries a destructive mandate to seek revenge. Satan has fooled us into believing that justice won’t come if we let go and forgive. But justice is independent from our healing. Justice for our trauma and vindication for our pain is God’s responsibility. Romans 12:19 Crucial to our healing is giving God what only He can handle but keeping the lessons learned as wisdom. Proverbs 4:7
Balancing Vulnerability and Oversharing
In this season of God reconstructing my thoughts and unhealthy choices, I am learning the aesthetics of fine art through the gift of writing on all platforms. I believe that one of the characteristics of sharing what remains in harmony with the testimony of God’s work in my life must look like new wine. Remember there is no cookie cutter path to healing. Your path may be different that everyone else’s. We are flesh and bones with feelings, emotions, and relationship dynamics. We are human! However, our humanity is powerful! We can be wounded healers by testifying through the scars. Scars hold the powerful testimony of a healing God. Paul Thomas in Health is wisely sharing vulnerability, gives this advice;
“One thing is clear – you can’t understand vulnerability by imagining that people are simple machines. A broken heart cannot be fixed in the way a broken car tyre can be. Changing from being someone who hides their vulnerability to one who values it and uses it wisely is an internal transformation that is inevitably painful – too difficult for many to contemplate. This kind of transformation develops a new sense of who you are – someone who harmonises more than controls. The idea that harmonising is more important than control for good mental health…”
Harmony in Sharing Our Testimonies
Personally, as I continue to ride the healing waves, I try to ensure that what I say shows not only my humanity but the power of God’s presence and rescuing in those challenging times. Luke 5:37-39. I have to show that God’s song of healing over my life harmonizes with the path He has allowed me to walk on. My goal is to also try to make my testimonies be in harmony with the picture of the Good Father that I profess Him to be! The status updates of my life must speak transparent, vulnerable, and healing truth poured out from Christ’s work in restoring me. Only the Love of God, His Sacrifice, His Atonement, and His Healing Power can sort out and bring synergy to our life’s story. Isaiah 53 depicts one of my favorite examples of a harmonious testimony, sharing just what we need to understand how much God Loves US!
In closing, the governing principle for sharing our life updates should be woven through this guideline which ensures that when all is said and done, God gets the Glory.
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8
Helpful Links
What Is Trauma Dumping? Examples, Signs, and Effects | Newport Institute
Kubler-Ross Stages of Dying and Subsequent Models of Grief – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf
4 Trauma Responses That May Be Hurting Your Relationships | Psychology Today
Health is wisely sharing vulnerability – PMC
