I am still struggling with this. Today, I woke up to texts from my mom saying I was going to lose my part-time job (working with kids) because of a recent post I wrote. Not sure if the sex or the atheism was the worry, but this only-let-people-know-the-good-stuff mentality has haunted me my whole life. When I was in college, she told me I would someday lose my (nonexistent) kids in a custody hearing because she found a photo of me online in a bra with no shirt. It’s taken therapy to get where I can share my writing again, but it is very difficult to do it freely, with her metaphorically looking over my shoulder.

I wrote Writing First-Person While Respecting Others’ Privacy while staying at her house and trying to see it from her perspective.