Roles women play, people women are.

I've found myself being labelled so many ways, daughter, wife, mother, advocate, artist, writer, volunteer... Too many to list. I've found myself labelling myself as well, anxious, contrite, selfish, too much, too little... I think if these labels as knives cutting away parts of my identity, whittling me into a shape sometimes different depending on the angle you look at me from. Sometimes I feel like they are pencils of different colours, the pigments blending and shifting depending on the person colouring. I wonder which pencils should matter more, the ones I hold or the ones being swiped by others.

Now there is a new type of swiping happening. I'm a millennial, I lived in a time without the internet being a daily necessity. The screen time I had was one hour per day after school to watch cartoons. In my short youth I learned exponentially and developed alongside the internet. I was there to listen to the whisper of people online grow to the deafening roar we hear today. I was able to happily meander through the burble of MySpace and Hi5 and then suddenly I reached the hurricane tossed sea of social media today.

The person I am, on and offline, to myself and to others, can't be defined in labels. I reminded myself recently to not be swept away in the torrent of what I see online, of the worry to be perceived by eyes separated from me by a screen. Humans are amazing, but I feel like we have complicated this entire lived experience. I now hope to reconnect with nature more than anything, craving simple pleasures, good quality basic needs and spending time and being present with my little ones.

The scroll and swipe have caught me sometimes though. I seek out inspiration in other women I see online. I find self doubt sometimes. Other times I find a shocking jealousy that I didn't know I had inside. The difficulty comes when those ugly feelings carry on for a length of time longer than the scroll and swipe.

There are so many stories, and the internet gives the ability to reach all of them. The difference is to manage what influences you and your life. Your labels, hashtags and self worth should not necessary be related, but all come together in the same soup, simmering and swirling in the heat of transformative communication. Women are already given so much to shoulder, to carry and sometimes the burdens become part of our bodies and minds. We will always continue the battle between other and self.

Today, I chose to see the brighter side of the screen. We don't know where the future will bring, if it will be more outside or in. All I know is that we will be human and to be human is to feel.