It’s 9 a.m. My living room floor looks like it’s made of toys. My kids are eating Pop Tarts for the third time this week. I haven’t worn a bra in days. In fact, I’m pretty sure every one I own is still in the unwashed clothes pile that’s made a home in the laundry room. I should maybe go start a load. Nah, I’ll wait.
I open my phone to swipe aimlessly through Instagram for a few minutes and there it is: that familiar punch in the gut.
She’s making quarantine crafts with her kids
She has makeup on and she’s giving curling iron tutorials in her stories. She’s projecting movies on a sheet in the backyard, and her kids are smiling and tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths.
To be honest, I’m usually pretty good at avoiding the pitfalls of online competition, but during a global pandemic, when the days melt into each other and everything feels upside-down, old habits die hard. What we see in those little square frames on the internet starts to weigh on us, block by block, each perfectly curated post heavier than the last. The self-doubt creeps in, quiet at first.
But it always gets louder
I tell myself that my kids are probably bored, that I’m a bad mom because I didn’t buy the things on Amazon that she did, that my skin and hair and body aren’t up to par. I let my insecurities stack up more and more with every flick of my thumb against my phone screen and she has no idea.
Do you know why? It’s because she’s probably having very similar thoughts. She knows that she’s trying too hard. She’s so tired from being on for her kids all day long. She misses drinking cocktails with her friends, and she wishes she didn’t care so much about what other people think of her. She spent way too much money on the projector, and her kids are already asking for something new to entertain them. She’s buckling under her own kind of weight. Just like me.
So what would happen if we picked each other up instead?
What would change if we removed the self-made competition and replaced it with genuine support?
We’re all on the same team. We’re all just trying to raise people who someday will coexist on the planet without our guidance. We’re all trying to be the best we can be for them, over and over again. And most importantly, we’re all failing. Why not do it together?
Some days, my kids eat cereal for all of their meals. Some days, I feel like all I do is yell. Other days, I fail at making pancakes shaped like animals and my kids and I laugh at the deformities. My logical son tells me all the anatomical missteps I made, and my kindhearted daughter reiterates how delicious they are.
There’s a yin to the yang of motherhood, and it’s all worthy
It’s all beautiful, whether it’s “good for the ‘Gram” or not. We owe ourselves, and each other, some grace. No mother is perfect, not even the seemingly “perfect” mothers.
So take the pressure off and look beyond the clean counters and Bento box lunches. There’s more to her. There’s more to me. If we lock arms by reaching out instead of merely clicking on a heart underneath the posts that make us feel inferior, we can create our own curated kind of beauty — the kind that doesn’t fit in a box, on Instagram, or anywhere else.
