Am I Building a Platform?

Ever So Gradually

I have 266 subscribers to Good Grief and another 259 to my Gratitude Project newsletter. I have 896 followers in total here on Substack, whatever that means. On Facebook I have 1,403 followers across two accounts, 1,179 across two accounts on Instagram, 1,136 on LinkedIn, and 77 on Medium. I write in multiple directions most days about a range of things. I don’t do a great job of promoting my own work, and I make almost no money from it.

I have not grown faster because I don’t make viral content. I haven’t made viral content because my nervous system can’t handle growing faster than I have. I am autistic and don’t like being perceived. Too much attention at once freaks me out. I have been trying to overcome my phobia of being perceived by showing up daily in front of thousands of people. My Instagram content got 50.8K views in the last 30 days. My most ever. Well, content I’ve written in the past has been viewed by many more people, but not content I wrote about ME.

After Trump’s inauguration last January I started making daily reels on Instagram. Chipping away at my phobia of appearing on video three minutes at a time. Monday’s video was seen by 2,242 people. My morning videos were a challenge to myself to get comfortable speaking on camera. Somehow they’ve become a part of my day I enjoy and look forward to. It astounds me how I can grow accustomed to things I was once terrified of.

I used to squirm when TWO people watched my videos, and now I can handle 2,242. Even the troll who came into my comments Monday. Part of my staying small has been to avoid trolls. I didn’t have it in me to handle trolls while also processing trauma in real time with an audience. The only trolls I’ve had so far have been friends and family.

I don’t like being afraid of things, and I like challenges.

So I started with the toughest audience first. I started writing from the heart, sharing my true thoughts and feelings, with the thousand or so people who know me best in real life.

I know some highly critical people—lots of them—so this was NO PICNIC.

People saw parts of me they didn’t know existed.

Many people let me know they’d prefer those parts NOT exist.

Especially my angry parts. My grief-filled parts. My abused parts.

Many of the people in my life don’t like those parts of me. Part of why I kept them hidden for so many years. I basically unmasked in public through the written word and shared it with everyone I know. Go big or go home.

People have had quite a range of reactions, and thanks to social media I have a record of many of them. It is fascinating how people’s reactions to my work have so much to reveal about them. I didn’t realize the scale or scope of my research when I started this, but I have collected very interesting data on lots of people simply by showing up as myself and watching them react.

Some people in my life have not been able to handle unmasked me. They’ve let me know in a variety of ways. Some as subtle as simply unfollowing or unsubscribing. Others with a bit more bite. I have pissed a fair number of people off. By showing up as myself.

This is why I masked for 40-plus years.

To not piss off my dad. Because there were consequences when I pissed off my dad. If I wasn’t careful, I could kill the man. Just treading close to certain truths could cause a panic attack that could make his implanted defibrillator fire, throwing him to the ground. I don’t enjoy having power over others. I did all I could to keep that man alive and help his heart heal. He was my dad.

I couldn’t face a lot of what I’ve faced in the 10 years since he died until he died. Because I would have had to talk to him about it, and it would have killed him. I couldn’t carry the burden of killing my dad. I already felt responsible for my mom’s death because I went off to college and left her alone with him and she got cancer and died. l couldn’t bear killing them both.

So my brain did this remarkable thing of keeping me safe in denial. I didn’t have to face the darker parts of my father until he died. I couldn’t face the darker parts of my father until he died. Or I might have killed him.

My facing the darker parts of my father has seemed to be pretty hard for lots of other people. This tells me they have trauma of their own they haven’t faced yet. Otherwise, my sharing my story of my relationship with my dad wouldn’t be triggering to them.

This is my grief newsletter so I’ve been focused on the harder parts of this journey of mine, including the reactions of others to my sharing my trauma publicly. But there has been just as much gratitude along the way.

My sharing vulnerably as my whole self with all my parts has lost me many humans who loved only good girl me.

Which has created room for many other humans who love me with and because of all my complicated parts. Which makes for a much lovelier life, I must say.

Thanks to each person who has been on this journey with me for any stretch of time. I couldn’t have done it without your support. It’s pretty amazing to have more than 50,000 people interacting with my content in a given month and thousands in a given day. Especially for one who had to first get comfortable with being perceived.

Incrementally increasing exposure is the best way I’ve found to overcome the things that terrify me.