I follow a young woman on Instagram, and she is magnetic and poetic and posts content full of love and encouragement and growth. Every so often, she dances. Her body is young and smooth and rippling and beautiful as it twists and shakes gracefully in my feed. As I can’t help myself watching her move, I don’t compare her to me. I don’t feel bad about myself or my significantly older body. I feel the energy of love and freedom and self-expression radiating from her intentions. I feel her dance to the rhythm of the universe. To the rhythm of her heart and the beat of the poetry that flows down through her captions.

On social media, we are expected to put ourselves on display, but do it in a way that is authentic but don’t be too cringey about it, either. Be real, but entertain. As I scroll through my feed or wonder what would make an engaging post, either personally or professionally, it strikes me that the authentic connection we crave online is almost impossible to achieve online.

Here’s what I mean. I dance in my home on a semi-regular basis. And I don’t mind dancing in front of other people, whether they’re dancing or not. One day, I set up my phone to take a video of myself dancing like the girl on Instagram, and I froze. The music was on. The beat was rippling through my body, and all I could think of was what the camera would communicate, if it would catch me at all.

It wasn’t really about the dance at all.

Last week, I was feeling low. And I mean really, really low. I woke up feeling that way. I could find reasons or explanations for it if I wanted to play the blame game. And I was thinking about my authentic connections with people online and in person, and the phrase “imposter syndrome” came up. I realized that if I am encouraging people to be real with me about their struggles, then I need to be real about my own. Both with my IRL people and my online networks.

This realization felt pretty confronting to me. I tend to want to rush the process of moving through my down times, to keep it out of sight, to be seen as the strong one, the one with the solutions. I think we all do it. I am also an eternal optimist. I can be positive almost to a fault. Most of the time, it’s 100% genuine. I can honestly see and appreciate a silver lining in even the most difficult experiences. I also know that I have to allow myself to sit in the dark sometimes, too, in order to pass through it in a healthy way.

In an effort to be authentic and to connect with people on that level, I wrote a short Facebook post and stated honestly that I was feeling low and that my thoughts about myself were not kind. This was not something that I took lightly. When I post on social media, it is extremely intentional. I don’t want to drop any random thing into your feed. If I’m lucky enough to get a few seconds of your scroll time, I want to make it feel like it’s not time wasted. I had to really consider whether I was even going to share my dark mood with the online world, or keep it inside and rely on myself alone to move me through it.

I know that when I enjoy someone’s dance in my IG feed, it’s not because I like to watch all the pretty girls dance (no judgment if that’s your thing). For me, it’s much more about who the dancer is, what the dancing represents and how I can relate. The freedom. The comfort in their own skin. The overcoming body image issues. The choice to surrender to the act of dancing on camera. 

I chose to share my mood on social media because even though my thoughts were beating me up and telling me that I was worthless and all alone in my experiences, there are literally hundreds of people who have found me valuable enough to friend me online. These are people who, like me, have busy lives and a lot of other things demanding their attention. These people, like me, don’t always remember to connect individually, directly, IRL, but they, like me, think about others with love, kindness and care. These are the kind of people I choose to connect with. I know this about them. I know this about you. You care, you just can’t always give yourself directly IRL to 500+ people regularly.

I intentionally chose to share. And writing one sentence and clicking, “post,” was honestly enough for me in the moment. It’s what my soul was telling me I needed to acknowledge my hurting heart and honor the present emotion. To name something difficult removes some of the power it has over us. The emotion is only trying to be seen, and when we try so hard not to see it, it only grows and finds new ways to pummel us.

That was my dance.

I bet you know what happened next. I learned how worthy and connected I truly am. My support network showed up to commiserate, send love and kind thoughts and offer to help. I chose a few different ways to carry myself through my darkness to the other side (like dancing, sans camera), and the light that my family and friends shone online in response to my admission that life was hard in that moment lifted me even higher.

I want to free myself from my own expectation that my online persona has to be positive and encouraging all of the time. Or the story that being down on myself means I’m not also well-equipped to lift someone else up and inspire them. It’s entirely possible that by stepping out and being vulnerable, I gave someone else permission to do the same and enrich their own experience as a result.

Yes, everything we put out online or in front of someone else is in some way a curated performance. Curating our performance in such a way that we get to the heart and soul of an issue or experience can lead to an even more authentic connection than might have otherwise been possible. Even to the level of art. I recognize the tension and conflict within myself and show how it’s part of the same thread that ties every one of us together.

If you’re feeling isolated, remind yourself of this. You don’t have to dance in front of the camera, but dance in a way that connects you to your body and your soul. Dance in a way that makes you feel brave and vulnerable and silly and wild. Dance like nobody's watching. And dance like everyone is. Dance to unlock your truth and take yourself to a new level of freedom, of expression, of understanding and visibility. Dance to connect. Dance to release. Because it’s not about an actual dance. It’s about finding your own way to let go of all the junk you tell yourself like it matters when we both know that it doesn’t. What matters is you, your connection to yourself and your connection to everyone and everything else.