Storytellers, memoirists, journalers, bloggers — anyone who talks or writes about himself or herself in a public forum — is faced with the dilemma of how much to reveal about oneself.
Penelope Trunk, whom I wrote about not long ago for her brave column on the relationship between her two abortions and her career, has written a new blog entry, “How to Decide How Much to Reveal about Yourself”, which is sort of a misleading headline because Trunk freely acknowledges that rather than agonizing about whether to reveal an aspect of herself, she instead has “more difficulty not talking about difficult stuff,” and by difficult stuff, she means not only the aforementioned abortions, but also, as she writes, “marriage, sex, … [and] running out of money over and over again.”
She then goes on to reveal that she was in one of the towers of the World Trade Center when it fell, one of those who narrowly escaped the building. And then that her parents had physically and sexually abused her, though she has virtually no memory of the sexual abuse.
Trunk’s explanation for why she reveals so much of her personal story:
So what I’m telling you here is that I’m scared of secrets. I’m more scared of keeping things a secret than I am of letting people know that I’m having trouble. People can’t believe how I’m willing to write about my life here. But what I can’t believe is how much better my life could have been if it had not been full of secrets.
So today, when I have a natural instinct to keep something a secret, I think to myself, “Why? Why don’t I want people to know?” Because if I am living an honest life, and my eyes are open, and I’m trying my hardest to be good and kind, then anything I’m doing is fine to tell people.
That’s why I can write about what I write about on this blog.
And when you think you cannot tell someone something about yourself, ask yourself, “Really, why not?”
It could be argued — and one of Trunk’s commenters brought this up — that it is not that difficult to talk about this stuff when Penelope Trunk is not your real name. But Trunk has been transparent about why she uses the pseudonym and what her original name was.
About the list of traumatic and private things she’s written about, Trunk writes, “But each of you has a list of things in your life similar to that, it’s just a list you don’t want to talk about.”
She’s right. But I tend to be more like Trunk than like those who have trouble revealing the difficult stuff. At various times in my life, I’ve written publicly about my reproductive decisions, my alcoholism, relationships, family, and the fact that I was raped when I was of college age.
Why have I written about that stuff, and why do I sometimes talk about personal stuff in this blog? I agree about living an honest life.
There is probably also an element of catharsis — both for me and for my readers. When you open up about the difficult stuff, people know they are not alone. The 264 comments (so far) on Trunk’s blog entry that I skimmed seemed overwhelmingly positive and supportive; undoubtedly Trunk’s story was cathartic for some of them.
For me, there is probably also at least a small element of narcissism. One of the pleasures I get from blogging is the same as one of the highs I used to get from teaching — listening to myself talk — in this case, listening to the writing voice inside my head talk.
What I wish Trunk had talked more about is what happens to you professionally when you talk publicly about the difficult stuff — after all, her blog is Brazen Careerist and usually about career and job-search issues.
Can Trunk talk about this stuff publicly because she is secure and established in her career? I am no longer employed by any entity outside my family, but I still worry about what personal revelations would do to my career. I would still love to teach again someday and am not sure if talking about the difficult stuff would be an obstacle. I even worry when I write about more lightweight, frivolous, and personal things in this blog — like my love affair with a local steer.
I long to write about a traumatic period of my life, providing self-help suggestions along with the narrative to assist others who’ve gone through the same thing I did.
We hear — and I especially hear in the career-management circles I travel in — about “personal branding.” My best friend recently posed the excellent question: How do you strike a balance between establishing a personal brand and revealing too much about yourself?
What does it do to your “brand” to disclose the difficult stuff about your personal story? What does it do to your career?
I would like to believe I live an honest life like Trunk avows. Most of the time, I, like Trunk, ask myself, why not self-disclose? I put myself out there more than most people. But a little sliver of fear — for my career, for my “brand,” for what my readers might think of me — holds me back from full disclosure.