This week I sit down to my computer to write, and my children are playing in my daughter’s bedroom.

Last week, following a minor breakdown on my part, I instead did my work in a local coffee shop while my husband had the children for the day. This was necessary to reset my soul which was at that time, frankly, screaming. I needed that time and I am thankful.

So what is different this week? This is some of what I have been mulling over in my mind these past seven days.

Last week things came to a head for me; the full moon was incredibly strong, in Taurus, and my menstrual cycle fell in line with it, coming a week early on full moon day. I was not alone in this. A friend of mine had her cycle wait a week before her bleed and several other women I know also found themselves having their own personal full moontime in alignment with the Moon Mother. This brings many emotions and much tension and psychic activity, so some auric and emotional overload is to be expected.

Yet this was not my only issue last week. So, what else had been building and brewing to lead to to the darkness that overtook my being last Wednesday?

Well, overwhelm. Overload. Lack of personal space. Lack of silence. Need for long-form thought processing, which requires both space and time. Too much social media (I suspect in order to compensate for the feeling of isolation that was building as a result of the overwhelm and the powerful feelings and thought-forms, as well as the personal seeking of ‘space’ away from my children).

Let’s get down to some real talk here.

Homeschooling, or just simply put, being, with our children all day long, day in and day out, can be a very wearing experience. This is true whether we have just given birth and are getting used to the responsibilities of motherhood; have several young children and are home with them all day; are ‘homeschooling’ our ‘school age’ children; are dealing with tired and needy children after school who have homework to do and a bedtime routine to follow in order to be up and out early the next morning; have teenage children who are either morose or argumentative and cause us worry and concern, while also seeming to avoid us and find us repulsive; or adult children who are full grown, and in whose absence our mama’s heart simply aches.

Motherhood is most absolutely not for sissies.

Motherhood involves the readiness to embrace change and transformation that is seen in Mother Nature herself. Yet Mother Nature has the distinct advantage here of being Life itself, rather than a human being with an ego personality, and the emotions and thoughts that feed it. Mother Nature does not have an in-built fear of time passing due to the omniscient (and oft unconfronted) fear of death. She does not avoid the awareness of the passing of time by the employment of auto-distraction and busy-ness techniques that at once fulfill the tasks required to sustain human life (or many human lives), and fill the space that would otherwise be left open to experience the sweetness of simply being. This being that we need – and avoid – leads us back into the awareness of mortality and the fleeting and uncertain nature of life herself, thus intensifying and deepening the experience of being alive, rather than muting or diluting or dancing on top of it. It’s complicated.

Enter social media.

I cannot go into the role that social media plays in our lives, in culture, in communication, in activism, depression, connection, disconnection, lifestyle. I am not qualified – or interested – to write that piece. I am aware that its faces are many and its role is complex and, as with a lot of things, not all bad, and not all good. However, I am qualified to talk about my own experience, and I am adept at being supremely honest, even if it allows others to judge me through my exposure. Honestly, that is my gift to the world. I offer you my weaknesses for you to look over and do with as you will. If it is easy to stand across from my words and realize that you do not feel that same way, that it is quite different for you, that you are stronger in this area than I am, then I am happy for you. Well done, seriously! Maybe my weaknesses offer you some solace that I am a faultier or weaker soul than you are, or that I have more frequent or more intense lows than you do, and if this makes you feel bolstered in some way, again, as I said, this is my gift to you. Honestly, I do not mind this. Well, it feels a bit icky to be exactly truthful, but I know that I can not hide my truths in order to play some game of hide and seek and competition in order to feel like I am better.  So, yes, when I reveal my inner feelings, either in writing or in speech, there is a vulnerability there that can alarm me, and I can feel embarrassed.  Yet holding them inside is not my way. I am a communicator, and I need to externalize my inner reality in order to process it. It is my hope that this comes across reasonably enough, rather than a pile of neurotic vomit on a page. If I am far from the mark and it is acrid and awkward to read, then I trust that you will not read it anyway, and we will  both be spared (you from the horror of reading my diatribe, and me from the shame of your having done so).

I digress.

Here’s the thing. I am not my pictures. I am not my profile page. Or I am and I am not. I am and I am not my selfie. Even my writing (and even my music), I am and I am not once I have written it and it is out of me. I am mySELF, and I am ever-changing and always growing, and often wrong. I am faulty as fuck. I am righteous, I am soft, I am doubting, I am huge, I am small, I am ridiculous, I am worthy, I am beautiful, I am vile, I am open, I am private, I am intensely spiritual, and I am utterly material. I am a mass of contradictions. I am human, I am afraid, I am in love, I am wild, I am tamed, I am me and I am nobody. All. At. Once. Even mySELF, I am and I am not. I am remembering.

I imagine you are too.

The thing is, for all that social media presents this one view of us to the world (not really intentional on our part, but more as a result of the technology itself) it also, after a time, begins to represent that same limited view of us to ourselves. That has at least been my experience, when I reflect in true honesty from this place of quiet awareness and sensitivity that I can sometimes sit in when I write (and am not falling into one of the many pitfalls of this craft – the pedestal, the hubris, the authority, the observer).

This is the first thing that has changed this week. As well as deactivating Facebook, which had become a space so negative to me that its effects on my being were palpable, I have also so enacted some serious and rigid self-limits on my phone use. It reminds me of the pain of giving up smoking. I know what I need to do in order to be healthier. I can see it and I can feel it. And the doing it part is intense because I am addicted.

And in recognizing that I am addicted I am holding my own hand on the path to healing and reconnection.

This is me, not you. You do you. In doing you, you do whatever you do. All good.

This is me in the circle standing up with my hand on my heart saying to you, ‘my name is Jo and I am addicted to the internet, and to social media in particular’. I have spent a long time trying to manage this from within my addiction, and now I need to put it down and stand outside it and truly look at what it really is, at where it really comes from. I am ready to follow those roots deep into the soil of my being in order to dig them up and usher them out into the sun and over to the compost pile of my soul’s garden, where they can transform and nourish new growth. A bit of a cheesy metaphor, but it works for me.

Putting down my phone has led me to explore what exactly it is that it gives me. Just as putting down the packet of cigarettes all those years ago, forced me to be brutally honest about what I got out of my 20-a-day habit. (Hint, it’s the same thing).

Every time I reach for my phone I notice it. What am I seeking? Is it connection? Validation? Friendship? Company? Approval? An audience? A document that I exist? It is dopamine-fueled in part, for sure (how many likes? what comments? I exist! People see me! I am a part of something! Feeling gone, repeat.) And it is worsened by isolation, of course. And yet the real kicker is that it also engenders isolation, in that if I am documenting I am less here. If I am less here I am less with the people who are here, I am less with my environment, and I am less on the Earth. Then I need to feel that I am here. So I post. Then the dopamine feedback loop kicks in again. And repeat.

Take it away and I do not need it. Use it and I need to keep using. Like nicotine. Or alcohol. Or heroin. Or pornography. Or fashion. Or sugar.

The brain has many ways of convincing us to continue our behaviors that do not serve our soul, and yet fulfill a chemical process in the brain that has been established through habit.

‘I don’t want to be shut off from the world and the realities of our disturbing times’. Read the news from a trusted source/sources rather than Facebook memes and article shares.

‘I like being in contact with my friends from afar’. Keep Messenger and write to people when you feel like actually reaching out to them.

‘I like to see what people are doing’. Check in once a week and catch up with people you miss seeing online.

‘I believe I can enact change through my posts’. Post once or twice a week, choosing the most pertinent moments to share, rather than documenting every meal, moment, action, scene of beauty.

When the Earth gave us Hurricane Maria, Maria gave us connection and we changed. When the linesmen and the oil companies gave us back the internet, the internet gave us the dopamine-loop again and we eventually fell back into our former habits.

Yet we remember. We all remember a time when we were not online. Except maybe this generation of young children growing up with an iPhone in their face documenting every smile, our beloved children who are all too familiar with that blank, scrolling stare and the reflected screen glare on the faces of their loving parents.

So, yes. These are the reasons why I felt so terrible last week. These are the reasons why I imploded. This is the backdrop against which I experienced both the Full Moon and the coming of my menstrual period. I am an addict. And I have needs that are not being met in their fullness, which leads me to reach for this dopamine-looping, circadian rhythm-disrupting bunch of nuts.

Time to address this. For real. Not in a blog post. Offline. That is my work over the coming times. What is yours?