I had snapped a few cute pictures of my girls. The perfect light, their clever smile, with the house key adorning their neck, a sign of independence. I wanted to post it on insta as we played basketball in front of our house. We also had a street party. Everyone was having a good time. There are lots of kids. The neighbors are super nice, friendly, generous, kind. This end of august was low key. Restful. Sunny. But in this lovely season I have thought a lot about sharing our life online. And mainly sharing our kids faces online. And decided to abstain from posting their face on social media. After a while it felt like we were not living. Like our life is not fun or worthy enough to share. Though I know the people who live private lives are having just as much fun, if not more. My tired brain forgets all the good times and the pictures have often helped remind me of the good moments despite the hard ones. After weeks of wallowing in monotony I am starting to feel glimpses of joy unencumbered, simple, unexpected and not manufactured. As an introvert the joy of being away-from-the-buzz is real. More so than all the high highs of socializing. I like leveled consistent peace and calm joy. 

Blogging, I heard, is a medium of the past. because it involves reading. Reading longer paragraphs. I’m actually giddy at the thought of perpetual anonymity. It does t discourage me from writing. It motivates me more to keep at it. For posterity. 

Sharing my life started from a sense of responsibility to encourage others about adoption. To promote a positive light on the matter, to show a different face of adoption. Sadly it let to burnout. Like many area of my life, that sense of bottomless giving, without safeguards, without replenishing. Or a moment to reassess why, who, how long… it feels like putting my soul on a platter to be picked apart and get nothing in return. Fame or praises are not valuable currency in exchange for depleting my soul. 

That being said, the conscious decision to post less of my family online, it was tough at first, but the slip into anonymity, and restfulness of privacy… these are slowly built and precious. I now print regular pictures and put in albums for my kids. I used to print pictures directly from instagram. It was so easy. The little notes and dates that went with the pictures automatically, were great. Jackie still loves looking through those first albums of her early childhood. But the loss of privacy is not worth it. Those notes are for her not for the whole world. The world mostly forgot it, and Europe still has this law that we could scrub ourselves off the internet: “the right to be forgotten” but deleting our social media and canceling our blog would pretty much do the job. 

For now we just don’t feel the fire. The kids are changing so fast. In a year you wouldn’t recognize how much they’ve grown. 

Meanwhile I write. There is so much to say. To wrestle with. But even that, we can always write down in the journal and let it get lost in anonymity.  That doesn’t worry me much. I live à life without prétentions. And there is joy and freedom in not thinking too much or too highly of oneself.