Tell Your Truth
There are moments when I feel like I really have it all together. However, they are elusive and fleeting. More often than not I feel completely overwhelmed. I’m torn between compulsively following to-do lists (so many to-do lists) and moving (with Derek and Ellie Jo, of course) to Bermuda to eat coconuts on the beach and write all day. The last month has been an overwhelming moment that doesn’t seem to have an end. Because moving to Bermuda with a baby seems like an awful lot of work, instead I’ve simply been taking life one day at a time and getting done only what is absolutely necessary. Derek’s fall semester started, I’ve been traveling a lot for work, Ellie Jo started daycare, we had a hurricane (thankfully we had no damage)…life has just felt like TOO MUCH ALL AT ONCE and something had to give. That something was making the time to write. 
But, a few nights ago I impulsively downloaded Glennon Melton’s new book, Love Warrior. I stayed up entirely too late and had the whole thing read by the next afternoon. For those of you unfamiliar with Glennon Melton she is a story teller and a truth teller and this is the very messy memoir about her marriage but actually, mostly, about her.
Glennon writes, “Tell the truth with all parts of you.” That is the foundation I want to build my life and my writing on. I was thinking about truth telling and how we react to it, and how we should react to it, and what I realized is that this blog was really born from a moment of sheer raw truth telling.
On April 16th I came home from Target and posted an open letter on facebook to a stranger who told me breast was best as I was buying formula for my baby. (Reprinted here.) By the next day the post had gone viral. Many of the media outlets who re-printed it ran it under headlines proclaiming I was “fighting back.” There was no fight in my post. Only a desperate, raw, frustrated, tired confession. I was defending our decision to formula feed to myself just as much as I was to any stranger. The post was my truth, I just happened to speak it on a very public forum.
I thought it went viral because I was supporting formula feeding or because it was relatable for so many women or because the photo of Ellie Jo that accompanied it was just too cute. In retrospect I’m sure all of those things were contributing factors but it really went viral because it was real and painful and honest and we are drawn to stories that are real.
What happened next was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. Hundreds of women reached out to me and shared their own truths. Some related directly to struggling with breast feeding, some were struggling with parenting, some were just struggling. But the beautiful part of truth telling is that it inspires more truth telling. Women weren’t just writing to me, they were commenting on the post and writing to each other. They were sharing it on their pages and telling their own stories. To date it has more than 15,000 comments and has been shared more than 49,000 times. It’s incredible. With every share and every comment another honest story is birthed into the world and the world needs more honest stories. 
This is becoming rambling and I’m not sure where I’m going with it, other than to say I wish I had written more in the last month and I am going to try to write more in the future. (Also, go order Love Warrior right now!) And then tell your truth with all parts of you and I’ll keep trying to do the same.
P.S. Also in the last month: I was on CBS New York as part of another segment on mom shaming! I told the producer the most important take away I wanted people to have from my post was to remember to treat each other gently and with kindness. Fortunately, that is what they focused the entire segment on. (Link here)
P.S.S. Today I cleaned up baby poop from the kitchen floor, so there is my truth for the day.
Do it all with love.
