Showing your work to family can be scarier than showing strangers. Start with strangers if that’s easier.

Strangers judge the work, and family judge the work while knowing you, which gives their opinion a weight the work itself cannot carry. There is history in that room too, old expectations and a version of you they may still have in mind. Finding it harder is not weakness or ingratitude. It is a reasonable response to higher stakes.

If showing people close to you feels like too much right now, start where it costs less, a stranger, a group online, one friend. Build some evidence that the work survives contact. Tell your family when you want to, not because you should.