Putting yourself out there
A success story
A tiny dog's eyes bulge as it looks nervously at the camera
Most women would rather downplay our accomplishments than talk about them. We’re terrified that someone will think we’re bragging. If someone suggests we use social media to share our work and ideas, we regard them with a mixture of loathing, suspicion, and primal exhaustion.
What follows is an example of what can happen when we let all of that go and try something new.
To my dear paid subscribers, keep reading, or listen to an audio version (or both! I am also available to write this message in chalk on the sidewalk in front of your house. A silent telepathic delivery can also be arranged…)
Let us beginnith:
When I started working with Natalie (not her real name), one of the first things she told me was that she hated Twitter. These days, of course, we all hate Twitter (I left the platform late last year), but this was before all of that. She hated it because she thought she had to use it a certain way, the way the majority of people in her field used it — a way that bored and annoyed her to no end. So we gave her permission to break the perceived rules she was following, and she started sharing things she actually cared about.
And while this story doesn’t end with her falling in love with Twitter, it does end with her DM’ing a media personality to pitch a story idea, and that media personality, who has over 1 million newsletter subscribers, saying, “Yes, please, and actually, let’s do a whole series.”
So now Natalie’s ideas are in front of over 1 million people, on the regular.
Too often, we think of social media as some sort of phenomenon with no tether to the rest of human life. In fact, it’s an extension of everything we are and everything we do offline: create, fight, inspire, learn, harass, fall in love, grow our businesses, gamble, watch porn (or please this feminist alternative to porn), talk about the news, wring our hands at the news, rage against the news, news news news, etc.
At its best, social media is a public square, a water cooler, a place to connect around things we care about and to find the people who are trying to find us. And while yes, social media is also a cesspool, one where women are trolled and abused and harassed, what’s also true is all of the other things I said. And when we only give power to the negative narrative we limit our experience of the world and of each other.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of unplugging, of putting feet in grass and connecting with breath and doing all of the things that help us ground ourselves in the physical world instead of the flickerings on our screen. But just as, in the debate around screen time for our kids, I’ve always believed that not all screen time is created equal (for example, playing a PBS KIDS game is not the same thing as playing Candy Crush), I firmly believe that the same is true when it comes to adults.
The first day the first newsletter with one of her stories went out, Natalie started getting feedback from readers telling her what a difference her writing had made in their lives. All because she was willing to try something new.
I’m not recommending you join Twitter, or “X” — in fact, please, don’t. Yuck. But do realize that being active on social media is really just about participating in the world. And as scary as that is for so many of us, especially and still after a pandemic that made staying home the new normal, the truth is that if we don’t participate in the world beyond our homes, we miss out. We miss opportunities to achieve our goals and dreams — not to mention, to create a better future.
And we aren’t the only ones who miss out: When we avoid showing up online with our ideas and stories, the world misses out. I know it’s hard for so many people to believe that, but the truth is, as the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham so famously said,
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”
- Martha Graham
So please, let Natalie’s story inspire you. Sometimes we need to step outside of our comfort zones to even begin to fathom all that we’re capable of, and to take up the space we are actually capable of filling in this world.
You are a mighty force -
Amanda