In the age of social media, it is so easy to share things with your friends, family, and followers when things are going well in your life.

Someone gets engaged? Everyone knows about it in a matter of minutes and the likes just continuously roll in. Pregnant? Just post the baby announcement on Facebook and your moms friends will make sure everyone knows.

But what about those more sensitive issues, when you want support without necessarily wanting everyone to know what’s going on in your personal life? This is something that I’ve given a lot of thought to in the last few years, and decided it was time that I shared my thoughts on the matter-- no pun intended.

Basically I’ve broken it down into three separate levels of sharing, which is a model I’ve adopted in my personal life in order to maintain some work/life balance. While it is by no means perfect, it is what has proven to work for me.

Level 1: Personal Tidbits

These are things like ‘look at how cute my dogs are, go check out this new restaurant, or see what we’re up to in the office today!”

All fun, authentic moments that we can share in semi-real time, to pull back the curtain a bit as far as what ‘a day in the life’ looks like. Fairly harmless, and helps create a level of trust and understanding with say, people who just follow along with our business page but maybe don’t know me personally.

Level 2: Real Talk

The Real Talk threshold is definitely a step above Level 1. It’s typically going to be something that I have been contemplating and organizing my thoughts on for a while, and am finally able to articulate how I’m feeling on the matter.

Typically this is something like a passing comment that rubbed me the wrong way, a social issue that has been argued from both sides, or an instance when someone takes advantage of the kindness of a member of our team and treats them unfairly. These can be most easily described as my ‘mama bear moments’.

My feathers have been ruffled, but I have tried to collect my thoughts and ensure that I’ve worked through both sides of the argument, and in most cases prayed about it, before sharing my thoughts on the matter.

Level 3: BCD

When I was