Are We Connecting or Just Performing?
Even My 10-Year-Old Daughter Gets It...
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My ten-year-old daughter came home from school a couple of weeks ago and somewhat announced she didn’t want to perform in the school show.
“I don’t want to sing in front of people,” she declared and dropped her backpack with the particular thud that means a Big Conversation is coming. “It makes me nervous and I don’t like it.”
I felt this strange pang. Not of disappointment, because I would never be disappointed about something like that. It was a pang of recognition.
“Okay, wanna talk about that feeling?” I asked, because that’s what therapists do: We ask follow-up questions even when we’re just trying to be mums who are winging it like everyone else.
“Everyone can see if I mess up. What if I forget the words? What if my voice cracks?”
At only ten, she was already feeling what I’d spent decades trying to outrun: the terror of being seen…
I spent much of my twenties and early thirties on stages. Many of them big and with lights bright enough to hide the audience’s faces. I told myself I loved it, but the truth was more complicated.
There’s something intoxicating about applause, about the moment when anxiety transforms into connection. But there’s also the hours beforehand: the churning stomach, the racing thoughts, the way your body seemingly (!) betrays you (if it really does is maybe a discussion for another day).
And I guess the questions I asked myself back then stuck with me for a long time—as a writer, as a psychotherapist, as a human being:
What if this isn’t good enough?
What if I’m boring?
What if people can tell I’m making it up as I go along?
That was quite a few years ago (I can now proudly say: decades ;)). And here’s what nobody tells you about midlife: It’s not a crisis, it’s the time between who you were and who you’re becoming. All those selves you’ve been (the performer, the mother, the professional), all the ones you still are, start to finally understand and figure out what’s real. And they begin to sift through the bullshit with abandon.
All these thoughts about my daughter’s performance anxiety coincided with scrolling through Substack Notes and watching some writers perform:
“Let’s all support each other! Drop your publication links below!”
“Who else is struggling with subscriber growth? Let’s boost each other!”
“Restack if you believe in authentic storytelling!”
But is it really seeking connection, or is it performance anxiety (and trying to play the algorithm) dressed up as support? Everyone desperately trying to be visible, but terrified of actually being truly seen?
Back to my kid. She asked me that night at dinner, “Mum, do you get scared when you have to show people your stuff?”
We’re honest in this house, and we don’t pretend parents are infallible human beings. “Sometimes,” I said. “But not so much of the possibility that people won’t like it. Rather that they don’t truly get me.”
She nodded, then asked, “And what if they like it, but for the wrong reasons? The ones that you don’t want?”
Ouch, out of of the mouths of babes…
Because the thing about performance experience is that you get really good at reading a room. You develop an ability to sense what people want from you. You learn the vulnerability that feels safe and the authenticity that’s still marketable.
But real connection? Showing who you truly are? That’s messier. It happens in the spaces between, in the moments when you forget to be X, Y or Z.
I know that the anxiety my daughter feels about the school show is the same anxiety we can feel about writing, performing, creating art. It’s not fear of failure; it’s often fear of being truly seen. Because what if who we really are isn’t enough? What if our actual thoughts are “boring”, our real struggles too ordinary, our genuine voice too quiet to cut through the noise?
My daughter decided to stay in the school show by the way (I’ll get to watch her today and tomorrow, that’s why this gets published today—break a leg!). Not because her nerves suddenly disappeared, but because she wants to experience it with her friends (it’s her first show).
I think we can learn from that courage. Not the courage to perform, but the courage to have priorities that are rooted in connection instead of trying to be “good”. To write something that might not get a lot of likes or restacks or comments begging for more. To show up as ourselves: uncertain, sometimes having answers and often having none, still figuring it out at forty-three, fifty-one or sixty-four.
Maybe that’s what real connection looks like. Not, “Let’s support each other! Share mine and I’ll share yours! Drop your link!” but, “Here’s what I’m actually struggling with.” Not, “Restack if you agree!” but, “I actually don’t know what I think about this yet.”
If kids can do that at ten, maybe we can learn to do it too…
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Such good parenting! You didn't demand that she do the performance. You have the big conversation and really listened so that she make her own decision without regret.