Social Media – The Perfect Lie
As I stayed up late tonight and finished up some dishes after spending hours with my family, I thought of a post I made on my personal Facebook page a couple of days ago. To give some back story on what the post was about, it’s winter break and the kids had been home for about 11 days at that point. I have five kids ranging from 11 down to a little one who just turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. The kids received several gifts over Christmas break and with a lot going on, things got messy. I made a post saying that there were piles of clutter and I was up late (again) the day after New Year’s Eve but not celebrating, rather picking things up this time around. I asked my “friends” if anyone else was experiencing the same during winter break. I got no replies, except one. The reply I received was that the mom didn’t have to clean up messes because she had the kid the made the mess clean it up.
This experience has given me pause. It has made me reflect on the perfect lie that is social media. For this mom, her life might be “perfect” as she seems to put forth. My, wouldn’t it be nice to never have to clean a mess again! I know for the majority of people, this is not the case. Life is messy. Motherhood is HARD! Being a parent is HARD! Anyone who says it’s not is not telling the truth. By portraying perfect lives on social media, are we creating a world that having messes and hard parenting moments is abnormal?! Mental health is so important and I am not going to perpetuate the lie. I am here to declare that having messes and hard parenting moments is actually very NORMAL and we need to stop treating it as if it’s not! Of course, there can be plenty of moments where there is no mess and parenting feels amazing but nothing in life is perfect, and we need to stop pretending like it is! We need to destigmatize life’s messes and struggles and start embarrassing each other for our bad moments as well as the good. Our world could do with a lot more empathy and a lot less bragging to those who are hurting, struggling, or just have a REAL moment. Come on guys, let’s get real with one another!
A current picture of my laundry room, because I am braving a fear of imperfection:
It’s okay to not be perfect! We got this! Let’s stop living perfect lies and start having more genuine moments. If you cannot relate, just move along, no need to bring others down.