A PICTURE CAN TELL A THOUSAND LIES…
Yesterday I shared a memory of me doing a talk at the RSPCA four years ago.
What the picture doesn’t show you is the pain in my heart having learned four weeks prior the baby I had carried for 12 weeks had died at 8 weeks.
It doesn’t tell you that 2 weeks prior I had spent 6 hours in agony on the bathroom floor passing that baby.
What you can’t know from that picture is that in the early hours the very next morning I would end up in hospital where they would remove the remains.
Stop comparing the fullness of your life, complete with the normal ups and downs, with the filtered snapshot happy moments we see on social media.
Comparing your apples with other peoples pears is a recipe for low self esteem and poor self confidence.
It leads to busting a gut to achieve something that isn’t real.
I know both of these from personal experience.
Truth be told the vulnerability needed to show up and post as much of the hard times as we do the good times against a trend of posting all the best bits is hard.
As consumers of social media we have to remember we are only seeing part of the story.
We are all as human as each other. We all experience the highs and lows of life, so don’t be fooled by what you see.
At the time of that picture I was happy, hurting and healing all at once. But at that time I only knew how to show you happy.
I’m still learning how to own and express the darker emotions and experiences I go through in a conscious way.
What I can tell you at this stage of my healing is that I am genuinely more happy since I stopped pretending both to myself and others that I’m happy more than I am.