Some Things Are Better Lived Before They're Shared. Right?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how quickly we turn our lives into content…

A promotion happens and it’s on LinkedIn before we’ve celebrated it. We arrive somewhere beautiful and instinctively reach for our phones. We hit a milestone and almost immediately start thinking about how we’ll tell the story.

None of that is inherently bad.

But I do wonder if we’ve forgotten what it feels like to simply live something before we share it. Even just for a little while.

That’s what I chose to do.

As I write this, I'm 38 weeks pregnant.

I didn’t share this at 12 weeks. Not at 20, when people start to feel “safe”—or at least safer. Not even when I was very obviously pregnant.

Of course, my family and close friends knew. Eventually, so did my colleagues (the oversized men’s blazer wasn’t it cutting anymore, ha!). But online? I stayed quiet until just a few weeks before my due date.

Not because I suddenly felt safe—I don’t think that feeling ever really comes.

But this post isn’t actually about pregnancy.

[A quick fashion intermission: oversized men's blazers deserve a medal. Paired with a great pair of trousers or leggings, they hid a 20+, even 30+ week bump surprisingly well. Consider this my accidental maternity capsule…without ever buying maternity clothes. I REFUSED to buy maternity (so ugly and overpriced) and was perfectly fine :). And yes, I wore heels up until the end. In fact, they actually helped with my lower back pain!]

The more I thought about writing this, the more I realized it isn't really about pregnancy at all. As excited as I am for this next chapter, I don’t want every corner of my life to suddenly become motherhood. I still want to hold onto the parts of me that existed long before this: my love of fashion, writing, building a career I’m proud of, chasing ideas, setting goals, and creating something that’s entirely my own.

I don’t want the things that have always made me me to disappear just because I’m becoming a mother.

Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll simply evolve. But I think there’s value in saying it out loud—that becoming a parent doesn’t have to mean leaving every other part of yourself behind.

If anything, this experience made me think about something much bigger.

Why do we feel the need to share everything the moment it happens?

Somewhere along the way, it started to feel like if something matters, it should immediately become public. We announce promotions before we’ve had the chance to celebrate them ourselves. We post vacations while we’re still on them. We document milestones before we’ve fully lived them.

Why?

Maybe it’s because that’s what social media has taught us? Maybe it’s because we genuinely want to celebrate with people? Maybe it’s because we want others to know we’re doing well? Or maybe, for those of us who create online, we’ve convinced ourselves that sharing every part of our lives is simply part of the job.

I don't think any of those reasons are wrong.

I just wonder if we’ve stopped asking ourselves another question:

What if some moments are better lived before they’re shared?

A few weeks ago, I published Your Life Doesn’t Need a Press Release. The Art of Keeping Things for Yourself. I wasn't expecting the response it received. So many of you wrote to tell me that it resonated, that it gave you permission to step back from the constant pressure to be available, visible and always "on" and always sharing.

This story is, in many ways, where that essay began.

Because for the last five years, while navigating IVF, many losses, and uncertainty, I quietly built other things instead.

From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing more than ever.

I stepped into an entirely new career after nearly fifteen years. I said yes to opportunities that intimidated me. I joined committees, eventually leading two of them. I stood on stage and spoke to a room of more than 300 people. Somewhere along the way, I started building Nine to Vogue into something people genuinely looked forward to reading.

Looking back, it’s strange to think all of that was happening at the same time.

Because behind every new opportunity was another appointment. Another phone call. Another moment of waiting that nobody else could see.

And I learned that not every meaningful chapter needs an audience while you’re still living it.

This was never just a pregnancy.

This was five years. Five years of IVF. Five years of loss, hope, learning how to stay strong in my marriage, and beginning again. Again and again.

But I also know this isn’t unique to infertility.

For someone else, it might be grief. A parent who’s suddenly gone. A relationship ending. A diagnosis. Caring for someone you love. A dream that quietly fell apart. The kind of season that reshapes you while the rest of the world keeps moving as though nothing has changed.

We all carry chapters that don’t make it onto the internet.

Mine just happened to be this one.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started writing.

Not about fertility, or any of my struggles.

About style. About craftsmanship. About the illusion of things coming together effortlessly when they rarely do.

Looking back, I don’t think it was a coincidence.

I’ve always loved fashion. Fabrics, craftsmanship, the history behind collections, the way a single outfit can completely change how you carry yourself—it genuinely fascinates me. It still gives me goosebumps.

But I think there was something else drawing me to it, too.

I was writing about things that could be adjusted, refined, reworked. An outfit can always be styled differently. A silhouette can be balanced. A look can evolve until it finally feels right.

Life, unfortunately, doesn’t always work that way.

Maybe it was my way of protecting myself. Maybe it was a distraction. Or maybe it was simply a reminder that there were still parts of me untouched by IVF.

Whatever it was, it helped. It’s still helping.

Writing reminded me that I was still curious. Fashion reminded me that I still noticed beautiful things. Together, they reminded me that I was still me.

There’s a version of this story that’s easier to tell.

It’s the one with appointments, injections and waiting.

The real version isn’t more dramatic—it’s more ordinary.

It’s planning your week around clinic schedules and then opening your laptop the next morning as if nothing had happened. Answering emails. Joining meetings. Carrying on conversations.

Because, visually, nothing had.

That’s the strange thing about invisible struggles. The world keeps moving, and so do you.

I suppose it’s a blessing and a curse.

There are moments when I want to stand on top of a building and tell everyone the parts they couldn’t see. Not because I want sympathy, but because I want people to know that two things can be true at once.

You can build a career while quietly falling apart.

You can create something beautiful while carrying something incredibly heavy.

During those five years, I changed careers. I built a community on Substack. I met incredible people. I said yes to opportunities I never thought I’d have.

None of those things came easily. And none of them happened instead of the hard thing—they happened alongside it.

But the longer I sat with that feeling, the more I realized I didn’t actually want people to know everything.

I just wanted them to remember that what they see of someone else’s life is rarely the whole story.

What’s strange is that, on paper, this was one of the most defining periods of my life.

Not just because of infertility, but because everything else kept happening alongside it.

In between appointments, I was making one of the biggest decisions of my career.

There was no perfect moment. No point where life suddenly felt settled enough to take a risk.

But sometimes it never does.

So I moved anyway.

Because…honestly, why not? Everything else is already not certain?

From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing more than ever.

I changed careers, stepped into new rooms, spoke about growth and reinvention, and slowly built a voice online.

People saw momentum.

What they didn’t see was everything happening underneath it.

That’s the funny thing about difficult seasons: they rarely replace the rest of your life. They simply exist alongside it.

You learn to hold two realities at once—the one everyone else sees, and the one you’re quietly carrying.

Continuing to build something during that time—a career, a creative outlet, a small corner of the internet that became Nine to Vogue—wasn’t just ambition.

It was structure.

It was something I could pour myself into when so much of the rest of my life depended on waiting.

Looking back, I don’t think writing distracted me from what I was going through.

I think it reminded me that I was more than what I was going through.

The hardest thing happening in your life doesn’t have to become your entire identity.

I didn’t keep this private because I was scared.

I kept it private because I wanted something—just one thing—to exist without outside input.

Because I know what happens once you share something like this.

It shifts. It becomes bigger than you. It becomes something people attach to, respond to, interpret.

And that’s not a bad thing.

In fact, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of sharing. People celebrate with you. They root for you. They become part of your story in a way that feels incredibly special.

But before that happened, I wanted this chapter to belong to us.

Just for a little while.

When we finally decided to share, my husband and I did it in a way that felt completely like us. Creative, a little playful, understated. He's a commercial photographer, I've always loved fashion and have a photography background myself, and making things together has quietly become one of our favourite rituals. So we escaped to New York for a few days, found a photographer whose work we loved, and documented this chapter the same way we've documented so many others over the years.

People didn't need to know my due date down to the hour, what fruit the baby was the size of that week, or where Mercury happened to be. They just needed the part we wanted to share. There wasn’t a dramatic reveal. No countdown. No list of updates. Just a few photographs and a simple caption:

See you next month, little one.

The story had already been lived. We were simply inviting people into it.

And I think that’s the difference.

Looking back, I realize that’s exactly how I wanted this story to enter the world.

I’m 38 weeks and a bit now. The little one can literally come any minute. He’s safe. He’s ready.

Some days I feel calm. Other days, I don’t.

I still catch myself thinking in “what ifs.” I still don’t take any of this lightly. I don’t think I ever will.

But I’m here.

And that, in itself, feels significant.

If you’ve ever gone through something deeply personal while still showing up like everything is normal, you probably understand this part.

There are moments that don’t fit into any version of a story.

Not big enough to announce. Not visible enough for anyone to notice. But heavy enough to change how you move through everything.

Loss, in this kind of experience, is quiet.

And over time, you learn how to carry it without letting it spill into every room you walk into.

Not because you’re ignoring it.

But because life keeps asking you to show up.

I think we underestimate how much can exist at the same time.

You can be building something meaningful in your career while feeling completely uncertain somewhere else.

You can be seen as confident, capable, progressing — while quietly navigating something that feels anything but.

And neither of those realities cancels the other out.

If anything, they sharpen each other.

You become more selective. More grounded. Less interested in performative versions of success, and more focused on what actually feels real.

For a long time, I thought this story would only feel complete once everything worked out.

Now I’m realizing that was never the point.

This wasn’t just about getting here.

It was about who I became while trying—what I built, what I protected, and what I chose not to share.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

Now, for the part that everyone probably expects me to say.

I’m incredibly happy.

After five years, I still have moments where it doesn’t quite feel real. In a matter of weeks, I’ll meet someone I’ve imagined for what feels like forever. I’ll watch my husband become a dad, and I’m certain there will be a hundred new things to learn, laugh about, and probably write about too.

But if this essay has taught me anything, it’s that becoming a mother doesn’t erase the person I was before.

It adds to her.

I’ll still spend too much time talking about beautiful fabrics and brilliant tailoring. I’ll still get far too excited about a well-cut blazer, vintage finds, and why the smallest styling details make the biggest difference. I’ll still believe that fashion is one of the most creative forms of self-expression we have.

If anything, I have a feeling this next chapter will make me appreciate it even more.

Because Nine to Vogue was never built around one season of my life. It was built around curiosity. Creativity. Personal style. The joy of noticing beautiful things. Those aren’t going anywhere.

Life is about to look a little different.

But I have a feeling it’ll still look a lot like me.