Confession: I am a longtime, chronic over sharer

& am learning the power of silence

I have a confession: I am a longtime, chronic over sharer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this as I write and share excerpts with friends. It’s something I think all people who write about their lives should revisit periodically: What are we sharing? How much are we sharing? Why do we feel compelled to share these stories about our lives?

A memory had been needling at me since I started this newsletter last week:

The year is 1995. I am 19, in college at Columbia University and in a terribly abusive relationship with a piece of shit drug dealer. It is the summer before my junior year. I spend my time working, rollerblading, and hanging out in the handball courts of Inwood Hill Park where my small time drug dealer boyfriend has a weed spot.(This ex had dreams of being the next Tony Montana. Reader: unsurprisingly, he never achieved this goal though he did eventually go to prison for some years on drug charges. I had long removed him from my life by then.) I make friends with people who hang out in the park, one being a fifteen year old whose boyfriend was 35. She is far too experienced for her age. I am not slut shaming her. Adult Vanessa now wonders what happened to this girl that she behaved so promiscuously at such a young age. One day I share something about a sexual escapade I had with my boyfriend. The following year I learn that she and my then drug dealer boyfriend had an affair. In hindsight, I think I knew when it was happening, I just didn’t want to know. I disassociated a lot back then.

Of course he blamed me. Said it was my fault for sharing information about our sex. Yes, this man was a douche, but that’s not what this post is about…

For a long time, I didn’t know how to have relationships with women. I trace this back to my relationship with my mother and sister, who were my first bullies. They were the ones who taught me that women couldn’t be trusted. Society just confirmed that. It’s wild how women are pitted against one another, but that’s not what this post is about either…

I know now this distrust was rooted in my inability to trust myself. In hindsight, this makes sense. I betrayed myself so many times. Sold myself out. Accepted terrible treatment then blamed myself for the way I was treated. I didn’t leave the drug dealer when I learned of that betrayal. I stayed with him for another few years, and of course he cheated on me again and again and again.

I stayed.

I betrayed myself.

But here’s the thing: I know that my (over) sharing was and still is a want to connect. It’s not my sharing that was the problem, it’s who I was sharing it with.

What does this mean now as a person who writes about her life and shares these stories with the world?

A person who is writing a memoir about my relationship with mother and how that relationship shaped every relationship I’ve had, especially my relationship with myself.

I’m still figuring that out, but I know this: If you don’t write about your life, you don’t understand why we do this.

If you don’t write about your life, you’re more likely to not respect the work I do. You may look at it, as someone once wrote, gossip.

I don’t write for these people. I’m not trying to convince anyone of the legitimacy of my work. I write to connect with folks who get why I write about my life, who want to read about another human being having a human experience.

I look back at the girl I was who shared too much in hopes of connecting with the wrong people. I did this again so many times in my life—to my ex who then threw my body count in my face calling me a ho whenever he was angry; to my sister who would blab all my secrets to my mother whenever she got mad—this is how my mother learned I had an abortion.

My truth has been weaponized against me so many times, memoir had become a way of taking my power back. Memoir is how I push back on shame and judgment I’ve imposed on myself. Memoir is how I make sense of and process my life. It’s how I say: I’m here and I matter. Not everyone will get that. With each word I write, every metaphor I pull at, every scene I expand on, every world I build, those people matter less and less.

I’m writing this memoir for the girl I was in the plum tree, for my daughter, for my mother.

You can’t make me feel ashamed of anything I share. That’s the gift of this work—I am loosening the grip of shame, one curled finger at a time.

These days though, I’m sharing less about what I’m doing and the moves I’m making. Why?

This past spring, a barred owl couple nested in the forest behind our house. Despite being nocturnal, they were active all day, and they didn’t hide, they stayed close, and I often caught them watching me as I watched them. If you’ve ever seen an owl in the wild, you know the awe they inspire in your chest. Reader, I spent so many hours just watching and listening to them.

My wife, whom I’ve proudly converted into a nature buff like me, one day asked: What do you think they’re trying to tell you? What’s their message?

You only hear owls when they want you to hear them. They are incredibly stealth. When most birds fly, the air turbulence created by wing flapping produces sound, and, typically, the larger and faster a bird is, the noisier its flight. But not owls.

Last October I saw a grey owl in the forest of the Adirondacks, but I only saw it because it wanted me to. I was deep in thought, having just spent some time translating and processing my mother’s journals, when I felt a sudden rush of wind and heard the flap. That’s when I saw her sitting on a log a few feet to my right, her enormous wing span of at least five or six feet spread wide. She flew off just as suddenly and I was left there frozen. It was later that I learned that the great gray owl is an elusive bird that is not easy to find, despite its size.

So what are all these owl sightings about? What are they telling me? After meditating on it, I realized it was a lesson around moving in silence. Owls possess exceptional silent movement skills that contribute to their hunting success.

I’ve shared a lot of myself over the years. I have chronicled my writing journey because when I wanted guidance, I didn’t find it. I wondered: why don’t memoir writers share more about their journeys of penning their lives? I figured I wasn’t the only one who wanted/needed this so I started doing it on my blog.

I’ve shared successes and failures, joys and heartbreaks. I shared my grief when my brother died and I reeled into the darkest place of my life. I shared when I fell in love, got married, moved out of the city. I’ve shared my love of nature, the journey to becoming a gardener. I’ve shared so so much. And now it’s time for me to move in silence, like the owl.

I have a lot going on. So many blessings. I’ve accomplished things over the past few months that I dreamt of for decades. I’ve also been grieving hard and navigating a lot of other personal stuff. I’m keeping it close, to myself and only a select few because this is what is required of me right now. Because like the owls, I want to be fully present with myself. So if you’ve been wondering where V is and why she’s so quiet, this is why.

This inspired a prompt I didn’t know I was going to share until I finished revising this newsletter:

What are you keeping quiet? What have you overshared? How do you feel about this—the silence and the sharing? How does this influence your writing?

That’s it for now. Have a great rest of your summer.

Los quiero mucho,

V