The Cost of Connection: What I Learned When I Logged Off
Last night, I slept.
Really slept — all through the night.
For the first time since November, when the heartbreak began.
And I think I know why.
Before bed, I heard something on the news — a report about social media, anxiety, and the toll it’s taking on our mental health. They mentioned it again at noon. No surprise: May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. If you didn’t know, now you do.
Mental health is just as serious as physical health.
I know this now in a way I wish I didn’t.
Last year, from early May to December, I lived through daily drama and harassment on Instagram. It was relentless. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I genuinely thought I might have a stroke or a heart attack from the pressure. Twice I ended up at my doctor’s office with such high blood pressure and chest pain that it scared both of us.
I normally have very low blood pressure. But there I was: readings at 167, 181. It wasn’t just the numbers. It was my body screaming, “Enough.”
When I explained the situation to my doctor — everything I was enduring online and off — he listened, then told me plainly:
“Your plate is too full. You need to take on less, especially the things that cause you stress. Stress will kill you.”
At my wellness check, after I’d told him nothing had changed, he said it again.
“Eliminate your social accounts.”
He sees this all the time, he told me. I’m not his only patient living with anxiety from the nonstop noise and cruelty of social media. And then he asked me:
“To what end? Yours?”
I told him I shared because it used to bring me joy.
He asked, “Where’s the joy now?”
I had no answer.
My husband and brother had been saying it for years — stop letting strangers in so deep that they have the power to hurt you. Write on the blog if you want to write, they said. But let the rest go.
Still, I kept going. Kept posting. Kept dealing with the vile private messages.
Until May 1st, when a stranger I’d never spoken to messaged me to say:
“Your blog, like your child, is dead you stupid old rude hag.”
And that was it.
That was the end.
I’ve always said: I never cared about follower counts. I never monetized anything. I shared because I liked sharing. Bath & Body Works once made me happy. The community around it did, too.
But over time, all of that was replaced with cruelty.
And I realized the anxiety, stress, and depression I was feeling came from something I could control — but hadn’t.
Delete felt like defeat.
Until it felt like freedom.
On May 1st, I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook pages connected to the blog.
And for the first time in years, I slept.
And you know what? I’ve slept every night since.
Even before we saw the news report, my husband noticed the difference.
“You’re finally sleeping,” he said.
When the news came on, he called out, “Amen. I’ve been telling her that for years.”
The same courage it took to start sharing my life online is the same courage I needed to step back.
And now, like I did in the beginning, I’ll return to just the blog.
Just me. My words. No noise.
Like the long grief of losing my daughter, this too has been a kind of mourning — and also, a release.
I knew there was something on the other side of all this, and I’ve pushed to get there.
Joy is on the other side.
And I am finally, gratefully, finding it again.