Photo By: Sanguine Portraiture
Exposed!
Written By: Emmanuella "Manny" Williams
I feel like I need to reintroduce myself. Hi, I’m Emmanuella “Manny” Williams and I’m a wife, working mom of two who lives on Jesus, coffee and occasionally Kim (Crawford that is). It’s been almost 4 years since my last post and in that time a lot of you have sent me text messages, dms, emails, etc... asking... “where you been being?!”. This post is not just to officially revive “Hey Girl Hey” but to also provide some thoughts and clarity.
Sooo.... what have I been up to. Well, the quick and short answer is all in the title of this post. I stopped posting because I felt over “exposed”. After 2 years of consistent weekly posts every Monday, the level of personal exposure, honesty, vulnerability and work required to continue this blog took a toll on me. I was tired y’all.
In addition to making sure that I was doing my absolute best to represent each lovely lady in the best possible way on “Hey Girl Hey”, I had to give so much of my self with every post. Breaking News... I’m an Introvert. Yup and also an Enneagram Type 6 ( Sixes are alert and vigilant, always thinking several steps ahead to anticipate and prepare for what could go wrong). Everything about my personality says... yeah, don’t have a blog.
For “Hey Girl Hey” to be successful, I felt that I had to expose myself and take a chance that things may not always go as planned. I couldn’t always be Facebook or Instagram perfect. I had to tell you when things were good and not so good. I had to tell you when I was wining and also when I was losing. When I decided to stop posting, I was definitely losing. I had publicly announced on the blog that I had quit Corporate America and that I was going to be a stay at home mom. Only 4 months later, I was interviewing for jobs desperate to get back to work because I was a terrible stay at home mom... I had failed. I couldn’t get on the blog and tell you all that I had failed. So I stopped.
The longer I stayed away, the easier it became to stay away. No pressure on Sunday nights about who, how, what and when I would post. No pressure or anxiety about what everyone thought of the blog or me... to keep it 100... I loved it and didn’t want to come back. However, in 2020, God quickly reminded me that “Hey Girl Hey” was never my blog to quit.
Throughout the pandemic, I received numerous inquiries about the status of the blog and when it would come back. I honestly even heard God speak to me about it directly. I ignored it all or said, I will start it tomorrow, just to let today turn into another tomorrow. Until... I got a message from a young lady who basically said... if you’re not going to use this gift I will. Then just like that I started to see this burden of me exposing myself differently. She was right... Hey Girl Hey is a gift. I am blessed to be the vessel that God has chosen to share so many wonderful stories about so many beautiful women.
In photography the definition of exposure is “the amount of light which reaches your camera sensor or film. It is a crucial part of how bright or dark your pictures appear.” Instead of feeling “exposed”, I learned that Hey Girl Hey was a vehicle to cast the right amount of light to reveal the beautiful picture of various women ... including myself. Just like that I could see the light... the picture was clear and in it I saw many beautiful women and I stopped seeing just myself. See in the end, the final picture exposed that it was never about me.
Sooo.... what have I been up to. Well, the quick and short answer is all in the title of this post. I stopped posting because I felt over “exposed”. After 2 years of consistent weekly posts every Monday, the level of personal exposure, honesty, vulnerability and work required to continue this blog took a toll on me. I was tired y’all.
In addition to making sure that I was doing my absolute best to represent each lovely lady in the best possible way on “Hey Girl Hey”, I had to give so much of my self with every post. Breaking News... I’m an Introvert. Yup and also an Enneagram Type 6 ( Sixes are alert and vigilant, always thinking several steps ahead to anticipate and prepare for what could go wrong). Everything about my personality says... yeah, don’t have a blog.
For “Hey Girl Hey” to be successful, I felt that I had to expose myself and take a chance that things may not always go as planned. I couldn’t always be Facebook or Instagram perfect. I had to tell you when things were good and not so good. I had to tell you when I was wining and also when I was losing. When I decided to stop posting, I was definitely losing. I had publicly announced on the blog that I had quit Corporate America and that I was going to be a stay at home mom. Only 4 months later, I was interviewing for jobs desperate to get back to work because I was a terrible stay at home mom... I had failed. I couldn’t get on the blog and tell you all that I had failed. So I stopped.
The longer I stayed away, the easier it became to stay away. No pressure on Sunday nights about who, how, what and when I would post. No pressure or anxiety about what everyone thought of the blog or me... to keep it 100... I loved it and didn’t want to come back. However, in 2020, God quickly reminded me that “Hey Girl Hey” was never my blog to quit.
Throughout the pandemic, I received numerous inquiries about the status of the blog and when it would come back. I honestly even heard God speak to me about it directly. I ignored it all or said, I will start it tomorrow, just to let today turn into another tomorrow. Until... I got a message from a young lady who basically said... if you’re not going to use this gift I will. Then just like that I started to see this burden of me exposing myself differently. She was right... Hey Girl Hey is a gift. I am blessed to be the vessel that God has chosen to share so many wonderful stories about so many beautiful women.
In photography the definition of exposure is “the amount of light which reaches your camera sensor or film. It is a crucial part of how bright or dark your pictures appear.” Instead of feeling “exposed”, I learned that Hey Girl Hey was a vehicle to cast the right amount of light to reveal the beautiful picture of various women ... including myself. Just like that I could see the light... the picture was clear and in it I saw many beautiful women and I stopped seeing just myself. See in the end, the final picture exposed that it was never about me.