Well, the inevitable has occurred. My mom found out about my blog. I should have known it would happen. It was my sister who inadvertently put me on blast, but it's not her fault. For weeks I'd been meaning to tell her I didn't want my mother to know, but I never got around to it. Then yesterday at a family gathering she mentioned it when my Mom happened to be within earshot. A few minutes later, Mom cornered me and told me that if it wasn't something she could read then I probably didn't need to be putting my business out there, and gave me "the look". My reasons for keeping her out aren't what she probably thinks they are though. Now I'm in damage control mode, and my clean up options are pretty limited. I'm sure this isn't the last I've heard from her about this. Eventually, I'm going to have to come up with some way to smooth it over. A lot of people would probably say, "What's the big deal? You're a grown woman. You shouldn't have to hide anything from her." I wish it were that simple.


I have a long history of hiding things from my Mom. I used to hide from things from her for the very reason she gave me a one way ticket for a guilt trip about yesterday. I was doing dumb ass shit that would break her heart. I would tell myself I was doing it to protect her, but I was really doing it to keep her out of my business. Now that I’m older and make wiser decisions, I sometimes keep her in the dark due to the unnecessary drama created by her being in it. For example, if I were to post a quote about racial equality right now she would call me in within 5 minutes wanting to know who was discriminating against us. She would have already done her google research about how to respond to racial discrimination and have 15 different ideas for me about how to fix my non-existent problem. Then when I finally convince her it was just a quote I liked and had no deeper meaning, she would get on her soap box about being mindful of what you post on social media because people will take what you say out of context or pass judgement on you.

A lot of what I share in my blog are things she already knows. She just doesn't know some of the specific details. I feel like every day she'd be blowing up my phone digging for extra details and telling me she has concerns about how what I write could affect me professionally. If she could just read it and not make it a huge deal it might be different, but that would never happen. Even if I made her promise to keep her opinions to herself she couldn't do it. Aside from the annoyance factor, knowing she is reading it would result in me censoring myself. First of all, I don't curse around her. I want to be able to say shit, fuck and damn in every sentence if I want to. Also, if I know she is reading it will basically turn into me writing things for her which totally defeats the purpose of the blog in the first place. I might as well just rename it, "My Mom Runs My Life". Take the online dating post for example, for example. She would be on my phone in no time trying to get more information, giving me her unrequested opinion, scolding me for my potty mouth, telling me how people will judge me, and asking me how writing things like that might affect my relationship with my husband. A few of those conversations and she’d drive me right out of the blogging business for good.

So, now I’m stuck between my freedom to exercise my First Amendment rights and pleasing my mother. My sister felt so bad and immediately set out to come up with a solution. Her idea was to set up a second blog and post something for her benefit now and then. At first I thought it was a pretty good idea, but after I thought about it a while I realized that it’s really stupid to have to do all that. I’m a grown ass woman. Long gone are the days of making fake report cards on the computer (yes, I actually did that once) and having secret cell phones so that I could talk to boys without her knowledge. There isn’t any risk to talking about myself publicly that I haven’t considered, and obviously I’ve been pretty good about keeping the wrong people from finding out about it if my own mother didn’t know. I’m sure that within minutes of finding out she was all up on Google using whatever search information she could come up with to find it on her own. I did the same thing and all I found was a lot of boring people with the same name as me.

To be honest, how certain people might feel about me because of my blog has been a hurdle I had to cross too. There have been a couple of topics I have written about that were very hard to get through. I was constantly having to remind myself not to alter the message due to what this reader or that one might feel about it. I sought advice about this on a couple of occasions which made me realize that not giving myself the freedom to say what’s on my heart because of what others might think totally defeats the purpose. Telling the stories of things I have been through and the lessons I have learned is a bit of a self-therapy process for me. I have overcome so much in my life, but I feel like talking about baggage that I still carry around with me will help me unpack and keep moving forward. Also, it is my hope that sharing these things will be inspiring to others going through similar things. Even if just lets someone out there know that someone just like them has lived it and survived the same struggle then I’ve turned a negative to a positive. I have always enjoyed writing and love having an outlet that allows me to share it. If people who know me as the person I am today change their opinion of me because of something in my past they aren’t really someone I want in my life anyway. If people who don’t know me read it and pass judgement, frankly, I don’t give a damn. If my current or any potential future employer is going to dig far enough into my life that they could actually find my blog then they’re doing too much and I don’t want to work for them anyway.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about my Mom yet. My current plan is to carry on, not mention it and pretend like it didn’t happen. Like I said, I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of it from her. She’s probably somewhere stewing about it right now and coming up with a list of all the horrible things that can happen as a result of me publishing details of my life. If and when she does bring it up again I think I’m going to do something ground breaking. I'm going to tell her the truth! Hopefully, she can respect it, and it will ease her mind to know that I am mindful of how what I post could affect me. I’m sure she’ll promise to not get beside herself if I let her read it, but I know that just won’t work. So, at this point I have no plans to let her see it. Perhaps I will email her content from it from time to time that I don’t mind her reading, but she’s just going to have to live with the fact that this is my decision.

Up until this week, I felt like I was trying to get in the groove and find my creative comfort zone with my writing. There are certain things I have been holding off on writing about, but now I feel like I’m finding my stride. My new blog layout has been a source of inspiration too. I feel like a real blogger now instead of someone just playing around with a free blog layout. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who are really enjoying reading my posts. It’s nice to know I’m not just talking to my keyboard. We can all take this journey together. Just don’t tell my mom.