Emily Articulated: Sharing

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

We’ve grown accustomed to sharing the minutiae of our lives — the small (and smaller) details that make up our day-to-day. We capture steam rising off a morning mug of coffee and record the sunrise spilling over a placid lake. We share sleeping puppies and kid snuggles and date night selfies. We add videos to our stories from our run club, happy hours and the weekend concert — our faces illuminated with the flashing colors of the band’s light show.

We’ve also made a habit of sharing the bigger moments — the view from the airplane window or holding the keys to a new car, a new home, a new apartment. We raise signs to the camera, with canned milestone slogans, like “I Said Yes!”; “Little Brother Coming Soon”; “Graduating Class”; and, “I Passed!” We ask others to celebrate our wins and commemorate our deepest losses, seeking camaraderie in the experience of living and being seen.

But what can speak louder than all the things we share are the things we don’t — either intentionally withholding or because we’re too thick in events to think to share them. 

We often don’t capture the details behind our biggest or shared moments: the skipped nights out to save money, the strain of juggling life’s relationship logistics, the generalized anxiety and sleepless nights, and the quietest moments of not knowing how to make it through while looking at everyone else’s big and little wins — or the losses they’re handling with so much grace.

These gaps in sharing create a particular kind of unease; the sense that we’re the only ones without it figured out, that we’re somehow behind or that the “right” stage is passing us by (all while scrabbling to redefine what stages are still left available).

The effect is often referred to as “Millennial Imposter Syndrome,” or the persistent feeling of being off-track compared to generations before us, of not quite feeling like a “real adult” despite being well into our 30s and 40s. 

Of course, this sense of unease is well earned — not simply a feeling, but a statistically sound reality. Millennials have reached traditional milestones later (if at all), with lower rates of moving out, buying homes, getting married and having children than previous generations at a comparable age.

Each of our steps has been delayed by a mix of economic pressure and changing norms. Wages have stagnated while housing, child care and everyday living costs have climbed. Even financial independence has shifted, with more people relying on some form of family support longer than generations before.

This, despite what our unflinching critics might suggest, is not for lack of trying or moral failure, but rather the result of impeccably bad timing at every turn — entering the workforce during the 2008 recession; navigating the economic fallout of COVID-19; and building careers in an environment shaped by instability, inflation and rising costs. For many of us, it has been less a winding path and more a prolonged, uneven start.

Already, millennials are pushing back against these feelings of imposter syndrome in the only way we know how: We add radical transparency to the list of things we feel compelled to share by calling out into the void, “This sucks for you, too, right?” 

Although it’s not ubiquitous, there has been a noticeable uptick in sharing the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes details — influencers “de-influencing” with unedited selfies beside polished ones, messy houses before the clean version and exasperated snapshots of kids’ meltdowns (usually packaged in self-deprecating humor, our favorite brand of armor).

This trend will surely cement us as the generation of authenticity, perhaps to the point of being, as the kids would say, “cringe.” 

Call it excessive earnestness (and throw in a side of Disney/Harry Potter fanaticism and nostalgiacore), and you can define a generation.

Yet, there are still things we tend to hold close to the chest. The biggest gap isn’t struggle; it’s context — the subtle or not-so-subtle legs-up that shape outcomes. Maybe that’s because these are often the hardest things to acknowledge, even to ourselves. Parents with the means to help. Homes to move back into. Safety nets that make risk survivable.

I’ve felt that tension personally. I recently wrote about building a house without sharing how that was possible: luck, circumstance and privilege. We bought our current house before the COVID boom, and our mortgage payments have been a fraction of local rent costs, allowing us to save money. We have parents who gifted land and family support that would catch us, even if we fell completely on our faces. These are advantages many people don’t have (that I married into) and that I’m still learning to accept without apology.

Perhaps we don’t actually need to share every qualifier. Maybe that instinct — to contextualize, to soften, to make sure we don’t come across as out of touch — is its own kind of millennial guilt. But if sharing doesn’t always carry the full picture, then consuming has to. Because what we’re seeing is never the whole story.

If we can be sure of anything, it’s this: We’re doing great (even if that’s just OK). Everyone is a mess a lot of the time. Some people get lucky and others have support that makes everything possible. And most importantly, we’re not alone in our circumstances, even if it feels like we are.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.