The Importance of Telling Stories

For years, I’ve struggled with how much I feel comfortable sharing online. When I was in high school and college I had my eyes set on a future as an actress, so I was ready to live a public life. When I got back to California after four years overseas, I was working at Twitter and posted constantly as second nature, working day and night to trademark Tweet as a post on Twitter rather than a generic post anywhere (stretch, I know, but these are things trademark professionals think about, I think). Instagram came around and we were annoyed, so I hesitated for years, but eventually I joined in and started posting photos of friends and Vespa rides in 2012. All along, I had been blogging hundreds of photos a week on my personal tumblr. It was a wild west and we were all in.

When I closed the store in 2015, I retreated from my online presence. I stopped blogging, made my instagram private, almost never tweeted- I took time to pause. I wanted to live in the moment and share with those I actually have relationships with, and when I had my first child I felt even more strongly that our privacy mattered. I never posted photos of my child’s face, or his name or even his sex for that matter. It felt great to hold some things dear. All along, I consumed endless content of other stories, sometimes driving me crazy with jealousy (ie, I too wish I was in ____ instead of wherever I am) or bewilderment (how can the world go on with smiles and happy people when I’m waiting on results on the severity of my baby’s cancer, doesn’t everyone know the world is terrifying?) But it also grounded me and helped me make sense of my own life. Other people’s stories helped me find my place and know I was ok. I’m fairly confident every new parent has spent hundreds of hours searching for images of rashes and “is ____ normal”, wondering how generations before us survived without knowing whether now was the time to call the Dr or go to the ER…

I’ve always been a story teller, and I’ve had a life filled with dramatic stories which have brought me to where I am today. I’ve been documenting life since 1994 when someone gave me a camera and some film and later a video camera which I obsessively snuck everywhere to document our obnoxious and pretty rough, unsupervised youth. I’ve been telling stories through art for as long as I can remember. Not telling stories is actually a challenge for me, and now that I’m a mother, I realize just how valuable those stories are for all of us. Before sharing stories, we would be much more likely to feel alone and isolated, something I think is especially true for pregnant people and those with small children. It’s something that’s true for all humans, especially women - leftovers of puritanical and patriarchal silence about our bodies and our existence.

So, here we are. I have so much gratitude for the stories that have been shared which have helped me along my journey. Did you know that having an armpit breast is an actual thing? Thank god for the one woman who wrote an article about it because when I was pregnant with my first and a full, lactating breast grew in my armpit, I knew I wasn’t alone. The ah-ha moment when you realize you didn’t even know you had postpartum depression but that it can kick in at any time? Thanks Chrissy Teigen for coming out with that story and the photos of your postpartum body, which reached millions of women and made us feel human. Learning all about what a colon does? Thanks to my good friend whose husband just had his removed for sharing all of the intricate details and normalizing that life happens and we all must move forward. Stories help us learn and grow and find our place in the world. Stories help us pass on history to our children, and document our place in time. Stories help us release built up tension and anxiety and find catharsis, the opportunity to move on. Stories help our imagination expand, help us think creatively, spark inspiration.

Electric Blanket has always been about stories. It was first a zine of art and photography and poetry and stories, and then the store offered several touch points for story- a cup of coffee in exchange for a note, a chalkboard with rotating uncomfortable questions to answer (what is the one thing you wish you’d said to someone that you never said), an installation where people left electric blanket stories on a tag which would be hung from above… It was an amazing way to let the insides out in a safe space. It was beautiful.

I’ll be sharing stories and interviewing people who I think are amazing because I know so many amazing people, thanks to the store and life at Twitter and my journey on three continents before that and since then… and lucky I have a forum in which to share, to possibly help even just one person learn something about themselves or their place in time.

xx Jillian