What is behind it all.

One thing about social media is that it oscillates between catastrophe and perfection with very little in between. This is an inherent flaw in the new delight of sharing our lives via photo, on these bits of plastic and metal that somehow communicate between continents.

We either share the horror that we shouldn’t look away from (and want to make right in the world), or the good things that we attempt to orient our lives toward, a compass that will keep us from the cliff edge.

Often we can’t share the hard things because those are the things we don’t have permission or freedom to share. My life is one long oscillation between heartbreak and bliss, and I can only share some of the points on the line. Any family will have its raw moments that feel irrevocable, any community holds sorrow, and yet we see a picture of a table and it looks unbearably perfect and we wonder what we are doing wrong.

I share a lot about the crumbling neighborhood of my own mind, but I cannot share the hard parts that involve others. You see the thinnest slices of what forms my life, and I am more transparent than most.

This is what we need to remember as we scroll through pictures over the next months. Behind every family photo there are days and days of tenacity in the face of obstacles, behind every piece of art is a vulnerability that is easily pierced. Every mother has had unkind words said to her, every business teeters in the scale between black and red, all families walk close to some abyss of some kind. We are so frail, with mere breath and grace holding us together.

Yesterday I had to fold myself up like a handkerchief and put myself to bed. It was all a bit much. Faces, eyes, numbers, bank tellers. Is there a setting between superhero and snail? I would love to find it.

The other day, I got my first negative review for one of my newer books. The reviewer didn’t like that my characters couldn’t get it together. Snowflakes, she called them. It actually felt like a good motto for whatever it is that I do. “Books that feature people who don’t have it together. Snowflakes welcome here.”