Online advocacy, information sharing, and experience sharing is hard. It comes with good and bad. Thankfully for many of us, the good outweighs the bad.

I’ve written somethings in pretty poor taste over the years, there’s been confusion around my use of the words ‘young lady’ (meaning a girl of 10) which went very badly. I’ve shared pictures and made memes of celebrities I didn’t know were problematic.

I’ve deleted things, edited things, turned-off comments, reflected, asked the opinions of others, had people message me and correct me (harshly or more gently).

None of us are perfect and neither should we be striving for that.

We should be striving for connection, reflection, and a great deal of unlearning.

So many of us endured horrible stuff when we were younger, and so many of us still do. It’s hard to stay humble, to not take things to heart, or get triggered.

Believe me, I know.

I’ve sometimes come off social media fuming, sometimes crying my eyes out.

I have to remember that there will be miscommunications, and that I’m still unlearning too. I’m unlearning ableism, misogyny, toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogynoir, xenophobia and so much more.

This hate (and it’s opposing privileges) have been poured into so many of us from day one: at home, at school, on TV and media, through people we meet in all sorts of areas of our lives.

I think what I’m trying to get at is that when someone tells me to check my white, middle class, mouth-talking, passing, privilege that I do so with grace. Not just for the person who is checking, but for me too.