Ramifications of a Transparent Life

Yesterday I tweeted: “transparency is a profound freedom”

… meaning that sharing all the good & bad of our lives, dropping the mythological veil of privacy, releases us from having to hide.

So we can become truly free.

And this tweet got a bunch of affirmatives and hell yeahs! and retweets.

Because transparency sounds romantic.

Uplifting. Interesting. Powerful. Like living your life in the open, tweeting, facebooking, blogging your truth for the entire world to read is a way to a life of effortless attraction & flow.

But that’s bullsh*t.

Because sometimes, transparency freaking sucks.

Last summer, when I started my adventures in living my truth, I began by speaking the truth about business. What’s really going on in internet & information marketing. The truth of what’s happening behind the scenes, the lies that have been sold, the backchannel discussions that needed to be brought out into the live conversation.

And then I was hit in the face that I was speaking only one part of my truth.

Because during that same summer, my then-husband and I separated & decided to divorce.

And not sharing that story felt dissonant with the rest of my message.

And that dissonance was devouring me.

So after sharing with my then-husband how much it meant to me to be able to share my story (and that it would be my story, not the story of the relationship or a reflection upon him), I got his go-head for making the “Divorce Is Weird” video.

What a relief.

Now here I am again, 6 months later, with that same feeling that I’m out of resonance.

That while I’ve been kicking butt in blog posts about bullsh*t in business & committing to be a crazy person, I omitted part of the story.

And speaking only part of the truth … well, for me, that feels like a lie.

So here’s the whole truth about truth.

It’s easy to speak the truth to the people in my tribe. I’m preaching to the choir. You are either already thinking the same thoughts, or identify enough with my underlying message that while you may make difference choices in your life, you wholeheartedly support mine.

And, it’s somewhat easy to speak the truth to people who are totally & completely on the outside of my life. People who can excommunicate themselves when they don’t agree. People who can leave a snippy tweet or blog comment as they leave, but once gone, never come back to face me. The trolls I can (somewhat) easily dismiss.

The test comes with the third category.

People who have the ability to make my life suck if they don’t like what I have to say. People who may get hurt. People whose opinions I think I should care about. People who knew a version of me, and don’t understand what I have “turned” into.

That is where transparency gets messy.

And with them, I constantly, constantly!, chicken out on speaking my whole truth.

I could say it is because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

But that’s just another level of bullsh*t.

Because really, what I’m worried about is me.

I don’t want to have anyone think that I’m a bad person. I don’t want to lose anyone that I love. I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

And I would much prefer to jump out of a freaking plane than negotiate that particular kind of conflict.

Which brings us to today’s story.

In two weeks, I’m going on another one of my multi-location trips to both San Diego & Austin, Texas. Driving down to San Diego to finalize an apartment for the January move to San Diego, and then flying out from there to Austin to go on a crazy yet-to-be-determined adventure with my friend @CouchSurfingOri.

And since I’m also a mom, one of the first steps on any such trip is to arrange custody & childcare of my daughter with my former husband.

But instead of sharing what I’m doing & asking my former husband for his help, I just told him that I’m going on a trip and he gets our daughter for 5 days.

Because the idea of letting him in on who I really am feels like an epic risk.

Now some of this is completely unreasonable on my part. While he is not going to understand why or what I am doing, he does want me to be happy (if for no other reason than that the mother of his child being happy will increase the likelihood of his daughter being happy).

He’s not a bad guy, by any means. And he knows I no longer need his permission (if I ever did) to find an apartment or go on an adventure.

And of course, since I will be posting the whole time, the truth of my trip will out. He will find out what I’m doing. Well, at least if he checks my twitter feed.

But the idea of him knowing who I really am puts me on the defensive.

Remembering all the ways I sucked at being married to him. All the choices I made over the last 9 years that were inconsistent with myself. How the person I thought I “should” be and was trying to be for years was, in some ways, polar opposite to who I am today (and who, fundamentally, I always was). How much power he has to make my life suck if he wanted to fight me for custody of our daughter.

And here we come to the real choice.

Transparency, living my truth, speaking the things that everyone thinks but no one says, is not just for when it is sexy and controversial and fun.

It’s also for when people may find out the truth they were not expecting. When there’s something to be lost. When people may leave.

Living a transparent life is everything. Or, it’s nothing.

Now I understand that for some of you, you have chosen to draw the line in a different place. You only are transparent about your business. Or you don’t share information about your children. Because of personal belief systems. Privacy concerns. Legal issues.

But for some, yet unknown reason, I’m incapable of drawing a line and still have it be my truth.

For me, it must be 100% all in or I can’t play the game.

And damnit, that freaking sucks.

#thatisall

Not only was this post inspired by today’s events, it was also inspired by my BFF Allison Nazarian’s post The Truth About The Truth and CouchSurfingOri’s post No more dancing…. (re the side effects of having a transparent life).

So how’s transparency working for you? Is there only one “right” way to be transparent? Where do you draw the line?

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