My best friend forwarded me a link recently to an article written by Melissa Bowers of the Scary Mommy blog. She makes the point that most of us share only 5% of ourselves on Facebook, and that the 5% we do share is our best “stuff” – the vacations, graduations, smiling selfies and of course, always-happy marriages. We aren’t posting about the 95% of our real lives – the refereeing of sibling fights, the “f-you” screamed at our spouses, the exclusive club our kid didn’t get into, the dinner we burnt way past any point of taking a freaking picture…

So, I owe Melissa Bowers a big hearty “thank you” for giving me the idea for my blog. I think we need to share more of our 95%. For me, my 95% is awfully tied to my husband, Ollie, and our two kids. Lucy, my daughter, is a 24-year-old grown ass adult and my 21-year-old son Ben is about to start his senior year of college. I feel pretty proud of the two well-functioning human beings I raised, but it also wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. Growing up, my kids were pretty great about 80% of the time. But when they weren’t… Let’s just say I didn’t always handle it well. And the husband? He was my college sweetheart and truly I love him every bit as much today as I did when I fell for him. If I’m keeping it real though, there are days I don’t always like him very much too. (Before you condemn me, I tell him when I’m having those days. Feels like dishonesty to keep it to myself.) As for the rest of my 95%, it’s my job, my extended family, my friends, fretting over body image, using Find My Phone to know my kids are safe…. Basically a bunch of stuff no one is posting on social media.

I’m going to share the stories that didn’t or won’t make it to Facebook, Instagram, or hell, even Twitter. I’ll try to laugh at myself, because one thing I’m learning more every day is that if you can’t laugh at the 95%, you won’t make it through. I also hope to share some of the challenges I faced and am still facing every day with my kids, my husband, my job, my body image (sensing a pattern). But if we aren’t willing to share them, how will we ever feel better about going through them? I know that I’ve had issues that I didn’t think I could talk to my friends about because “their kids would NEVER do that” or “she loves her husband so much she’ll think I’m the c-word if I tell her what I said to my husband last night!” But probably, my challenges are somewhere in their 95%s too. Let’s find out together.