Today’s prompt in the National Health Blog Post Month challenge invites participants to talk about disclosure. How do we decide what to share and what not to share in our posts?
This is a question I grapple with from time to time, as all bloggers should. As soon as you put any aspect of your life onto the Internet, you can say goodbye to privacy. Sometimes that really doesn’t matter. There’s no danger in me posting my race times and less-than-flattering photographs of myself in motion. Any Joe on the street can go online and look up my race times anyway. Since that information is publicly available, I may as well post it in my blog where I can brag about it a little.
I am equally open about my son’s autism and the challenges it presents to my family. This is where the question of disclosure becomes a little tricky, because I am being open about people other than myself. There are certain things that I will not discuss on the Internet, but in general I talk quite freely about the lives of my kids, and to a lesser extent, my husband. It is one thing for me to talk about myself, but my right to make that decision on behalf of my children is a bit of a gray area.
My blog serves multiple purposes. It’s a form of expression for my socially anxious, bad-at-verbal-conversation self. Writers as a breed tend to be a little neurotic and introverted, and I am no exception. This is how we communicate. Writing gives us a voice that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Apart from fulfilling my own need for self-expression, my blog gives hope to other parents of special needs children who might be feeling a little lost and alone. From time to time, I get emails from readers telling me how my writing has made them feel less overwhelmed, and more able to cope. Those emails make everything truly worthwhile, because at the end of the day, what I want is to do my small part to make the world a better place for our kids, for the parents and siblings, for everybody.
At the same time, I hope to smash the stigmas surrounding autism, and the way I see it, the best way to do that is to be frank about it all. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, and in talking about autism, I hope to give it a human face, to give people the message that although there are little kids with autism, they are first and foremost little kids.
There are aspects of my kids’ lives that I will never talk about on my blog. My basic rule is this: if I cannot talk about it in public, I cannot talk about it on my blog. I agonize over many of my posts, weighing the benefits of sharing information against the risk of anyone getting hurt. I have written entire posts and then deleted them without publishing them.
It’s a delicate balancing act sometimes, and I find that as long as I listen to my gut instinct, it’s OK.
How do you decide what information to share on your blog? Have you ever shared something and later regretted it?
(Photo credit: John “Pathfinder” Lester. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)
This is a question a lot of us bloggers battle with. For me, I remain semi annonymous and work hard to protect my childrens identities. Much of this is due to the nature of some of my posts; I dont want professionals recognising us through my posts and for it to affect relationships. Also because my children are older (over 10) their privacy is even more important now as they approach adolescence. So I’m select about what I write about and I try and keep it general without being too specific about their difficulties. As you say, it is a difficult balancing act.
You raise a good point. As my older son gets closer to adolescence, I am having to think about the challenges that go with that particular age. I will revisit my approach when it comes to writing about those things, and as you said, stick more to the general than the specifics.
Pretty good. I liked your reflections!
Kirsten, I don’t know anyone with autism and have never dealt with it. Reading your blogs has certainly helped me understand even a child crying in Wal-Mart.
As you know, Bill has liver cancer and I write short updates on CaringBridge. I find it difficult sometimes to write about some of the situations we experience and yet keep his dignity intact. Luckily, I know he reads my updates so it has been easy to keep what I post in check. I only write about what I feel comfortable with him reading.
When I was young, my paranoid father would periodically remind me to “NEVER put anything in writing because it can be used against you”! This led to me totally repressing my need to express myself by writing, for most of my life. 🙁
The wonderful moms I “met” through Mamapedia and World Moms Blog encouraged me to start a blog of my own, after I’d “gotten my feet wet” by having a couple of my posts published on their sites. That’s how http://www.blogbythephoenix.com was born. Very few people know that I’m “The Phoenix” because of some of the difficult subjects I felt I needed to share. Slowly, I’m allowing more people into my “secret” …. it’s been a HUGE psychological breakthrough for me to even get this far!
I agree with what Kirsten wrote as well as what was said in the other comments …. I agonise over every word and many of my posts don’t get published. I don’t refer to my children or hubby by name and mostly write about my personal experiences. I think that it’s prudent to weigh your words before you post them. My “rule of thumb” is; “Is this post for the greater good? WHY do I want to post this?” I feel that if my intentions are the right ones, it’s ok to post.