An Open Letter

By: Shea Harris

December 18, 2015 I released this blog and was completely frightened. I didn’t know if you all would check it out, ignore it or just completely hate it. Once I released the blog and informed everyone on my social media platforms, I received so much love from you all it was overwhelming. I would’ve never thought in years I would consider myself a blogger or even consider doing this on a weekly basis. I was completely outdone with the support you all showered me with, I began to doubt myself. I began thinking:

Shea, what are you doing? Why do you think you can keep this up with a full time job and a heavy social life? How will you continue to bring new content to your audience? How will you continue to have people support you? What did you just get yourself into?!

To this day, I still have those same thoughts. I can’t thank you all enough for clicking on the link to come to my page. It’s something about looking at my stats on my blog seeing people are coming back day after day just to get an ounce of encouragement. It warms my heart to the point I get defeated. I don’t want sheawhatsreal.com to be a one-time thing or something I throw under the rug when it becomes difficult. I want to be able to give you more as much as possible. The thought of getting burned out scares me. I’m already putting enough pressure on myself to give you all content to read every week, but its even more scarier to not have anything to say. Even now as I’m writing this I can’t help but to think “oh girl after reading this, they’ll probably be tired of you.”

As I was prepping this blog, I only told a select few of what I was doing. Everyone, in my opinion, was shocked and completely for it! A lot of them knew I didn’t acknowledge this creative side and were really happy I was taking advantage of it at this moment. Every week I was doubting myself. Every week I was worried how this blog would be received. Every week I was making edits to blog posts. But I must say, God placed some special people in my life to encourage me at my weakest moments. When ever I spoke an ounce of doubt or negativity, someone was always there to check me. When ever I didn’t think my posts were getting read, my stats were always there to prove otherwise.

Even after all of the positive feedback, I’ve still battled with accepting my gift. For years I have been asking God to show me the talent that he has blessed me with and now that know what it is, I can’t help but to become even more hesitant to display it. It shouldn’t matter what people say to you or how they act towards you, but I still become stand-offish when it comes to publishing work on this site. I’ve always been able to take constructive criticism, but this right here is different. This is literally my baby. Creating and producing this blog has resulted in late nights and early mornings, sleepless nights, money being spent and my inner perfectionist coming out. It took for me to go home last month for me to realize this enormous blessing.

I went home for one day during the Holidays and was able to spend time with a few family members. Our conversations are always filled with updates, laughs and jokes over a bowl or two of sherbet. This particular visit was a little different because I didn’t get to see them before I moved to Miami. Throughout the evening we spoke about life in Miami, meeting new friends and my new job. There were multiple times when I could’ve brought up this blog, but I didn’t. Not because my family members wouldn’t be proud of me, but because I was too busy trying to be humble. I mean, how could you just say “oh yeah I have a new blog, you should check it out!” But if we’re being honest, I should’ve said just that. I know my family pretty well and they would’ve welcomed my creative side with open arms, but my issue wasn’t with them.

The issue honestly lies within myself. I’ve been so busy creating, I forgot to be proud of myself and my accomplishments. I was so worried about what others would say or think about this blog, I didn’t say aloud “you go Shea; I’m proud of you.” The last thing I want to do is force this blog down your throats or talk about it too much. I want you all to visit this site because you want to. I don’t want to have to tweet about it every 5 minutes in order to gain readers. I also don’t want to boast about finding my talent and gift from God. It’s taken me years to finally listen to the direction of where God is taking me and I’m still a work in progress. Accepting your gift and sharing it with people shouldn’t result in self doubt or a ridiculous amount of pressure.

The process of acknowledging my gift was smooth and exciting, along with a few negative bits. Instead of taking on the negativity, I should have been brushing them off and creating more beautiful and insightful blog posts. Keep in mind, getting rid of the self doubt and excessive amount of pressure isn’t something that can be done overnight. I still have moments where I can’t believe I produced this blog and become overwhelmed with your feedback. My main goal is to have you all come back for more and remain humble throughout the process. As stated before I don’t want to force you all to continue to visit, but hopefully after reading this post you gain a bit more understanding of where I am coming from.

For me, its not easy for me to accept when something is clearly God given. I’m always anxious and nervous for the outcome, I don’t enjoy the process. I’m always encouraging people left and right, I forget to encourage myself. It’s taking everything out of me not to delete this entire post because I vowed not to go too deep into my life and things I’m battling with. But if I were to delete this post, I’d also be going against my main focus of this blog: to uplift and encourage you all. I’ve said numerous times:

My main goal of this blog is to encourage and uplift people outside of my circle. You never know what someone is going through. If I got through it, I want to tell people about it so they know they’ll get through it too.

I want to stay true to all the readers and I plan to do just that. If I have to dig deep into my personal life to help out someone, I’ll do just that. If you know your talent show it, don’t hide it in the darkness.

Job 1:21
and said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”