the exhibitionist's guide to keeping secrets from the internet

for those holding something back (but hating it)

I first learned the word “enigma” in high school and I remember thinking… ew.

It sounds like something you could catch from the germ-riddled surfaces of a mall bathroom.

Sorry, I can’t make it, I caught the enigma that’s going around.

Even with a cuter name, ~mysterious~ has just never done it for me. I WILL be explaining my childhood family dynamic after three sips of wine and I WILL be showing you pictures of all of my ex-boyfriends after three glasses. (If we order a third bottle, you’ll know exactly how they were in bed.)

I’m fuelled by exhibition and lit up by feeling known, so when I fell into the world of online leadership, holding things back from the internet was never gonna be my bag. If it’s my story to tell, then at some point I’m going to be telling it.

At some point.

As someone who genuinely wants to bare it all, that sentence is my personal purgatory. The awkward interlude where the unfolding is happening in private but not yet seen, in public. The liminal experience of knowing something that others don’t, while also being privy to the fact that they will, soon.

“At some point,” is a lurch that I reject with every fibre of my being — and yet here I am, reporting to you live from the nucleus of it.

Cue “something big is coming” in influencer voice.

Over the past few months, I’ve been making some decisions about my life that feel precious to me, are still precarious in ways, and aren’t processed enough for an announcement post — just yet.

And that’s human, isn’t it? To move through something quietly, for a minute?

But when you’re making a living sharing your life online, less so.

My brand of “human” is public-facing — and my particular flavour of online leadership is really fucking honest.

Whatever I build, you build with me. Wherever I go, you’re invited.

When so much of my existence is witnessed through social media (because I genuinely like it that way) a secret entering the chat feels… sticky.

Or, more truthfully: it feels wildly, painfully unnatural.

I’m holding back because I have to, and I’m hating it.

This how-to is for you if you’re in that with me — a handbook for showing up, secrets-and-all, before you’ve reached some point.

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I. SECRETS ≠ SILENCE

This is isn’t my first rodeo in shutting-the-fuck-up-for-a-second — I’ve had lots of other seasons where I’ve had to keep hush-y:

As we got ready to move abroad As we dismantled our brand agency As we negotiated to sell our Tulum property As we decided to cancel our 2025 event series As we planned our investment into a local wine shop

There were conversations to have and contracts to sign before the algo got rights to the story.

In several of those instances, I made a rookie mistake: letting the thing-I-wasn’t-saying take up so much space that I couldn’t find the capacity to say anything at all.

When we’re longing to show up whole but just literally can’t for a bit, there’s this weird contraction that happens. It’s as if your brains can’t process the “not this part, yet” and so we turn it into a “none of it.”

90% openness should be more than enough while that 10% is still cooking, but instead, the unfinished business just swallows us up into ghost-town.

I’ve since learned how to keep something quiet without letting it silence me.

It’s possible to temporarily protect a part of yourself without pushing your community away, in the process.

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II. BOUNDARIES VS. SECRETS

I emphasized the word temporarily in the sentence above because that’s what a secret needs to be: short-term.

Long-term secrets are just boundaries — AKA, things you just aren’t going to talk about online, like, ever — and they’re valid (see also: crucial) but this conversation is not about them.

Deciding you’ll never show your partner’s face online is a boundary.

Choosing not to announce your relationship ‘til you hit 6 months is a secret.

The field guide for secret-keeping you’ll find below is only applicable to a short-term hold-back that will eventually hit the feed when the time is right.

(We’ll get to the boundaries thing another day.)

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III. HOW TO KEEP A SECRET FROM THE INTERNET

Hold the vision

The first and most critical rule for secret-keeping is to understand what you’re waiting for — a future-self-of-sorts, a bird’s eye view on what life will feel like once it’s all in the open. There are tons of practices you can reach for to stay connected to this “when I finally…” feeling, but one that I’ve personally been loving is saving content ideas that align with the season of life I’ll be stepping into. This feels like a little promise to both me and my community, knowing that I’m going to share it eventually because I’m preparing for how it will look, when I do.

Stay close where you can

Dismiss the notion that privacy and intimacy can’t co-exist. Regardless of how big and significant it feels for you, imagine that your secret is only 10% of your personality. What makes up the other 90%? Decide, and go so fucking hard on it. Scratch your itch to say more by literally saying more, about other shit. (Tinx just hard-launched a book she’s been writing for two years, and despite following her on every platform and listening to her podcast 3x/week, I had no fucking idea it was coming. But the dating saga with good-kisser-guy? Lives in my mind rent free.)

Choose your receptacles

Online secrets aren’t the same as secret-secrets, because if you’re going to tell the internet eventually, you should have no qualms telling your best friend. To stay the course, you’re going to need designated vessels for receiving updates — people you can text as you make progress, or change your mind, or find out new information. All my besties are privy, and I can share wins with my business support systems whenever I feel like I’m being too annoying for the former. The ability to openly share in designated spaces makes it feel so much lighter when you show up in the spots that you can’t.

Light at the end

The most fun part about your secret is the day when it will no longer be one — so set your “release date” right now. I know exactly when I’ll be able to speak on mine, which helps me compartmentalize it, tucking it into a none-of-my-business box because I know it doesn’t need to have any place in my presence ‘til then. This quells the cyclical overthinking of when/how it gets rolled out and allows you to calmly arrive to the date with plenty of foresight.

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IV. SECRETS MAKE LEADERS

“Secrets don’t make friends,” but they do make leaders.

Knowing when to share and when to shut the fuck up is an unspoken art. And as much as letting it all hang out is my love language, I also know that it serves my community better when I can do so from a place that’s processed just-enough to still feel alive for me but packaged in a way that makes it supportive to them. I have a strict no gaping wounds rule which is what keeps my content in the “vulnerable” category without heading towards that pity-posting place.

Re: my current secret, if I were to be posting about it now, there would be a lot of unanswered questions, back-and-forths, will-they-won’t-they… annoying, drawn-out, pointless shit that would get fucking exhausting for ALL of us. I’ve been re-watching Gossip Girl and their most engaging story arcs are usually 3-4 episodes — 12 months waiting for Blair to meet Chuck at the top of the Empire State wouldn’t make for good TV.

As you can imagine, I’m not a fan of the hard-launch (love it for you but could never be me). I live for a shared journey — steps and milestones we can experience in real-time together — but I have to stay in charge of when that journey begins, making sure it starts with enough closed loops that we can have our 3-4 episode adventure without turning into a daytime soap.

It helps, as a secret-hater, to remember that we’re not lying: we’re just advancing the plot on our own terms.

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V. CONFESSIONAL

For all the “I hate secrets” I’ve been serving today, my capacity to hold them for others is vast. If you’re sitting on a *something* and just need to fucking tell someone, my DMs are open.

I’ll tel you mine if you tell me yours.

𐄂𐄂

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IMAGE LINKS:

PRICE
SUIT
MARG
PROUD
SUNNIES
TOTE
EMBARASSING
EDIT
DESIRE
GLASS
FALLING

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