I can still, very vividly, remember the wait. I’d like to say I was really young, but the fact that I can remember it fairly clearly makes me afraid I was a little older than I’d like to admit. But at any rate, I would *ahem* go to the bathroom, and need my mom to help me wipe. So I would call out to her that I was finished and then I would wait. Sometimes she was on the phone. Sometimes she might be finishing folding our laundry. Or maybe she was just enjoying a few moments of silence. I sat there for what felt like an eternity (but was likely 1-2 minutes) until she came. I don’t know what she did in those few minutes of solitude. But I can tell you one thing I’m 100% certain she was not doing.
She was not getting on Instagram or Facebook to see what other moms were doing.
I experienced childhood before the age of the internet. I still had dial-up internet in high school, and my first ‘attempts’ at social media came with AIM in my latter years of high school. I don’t know that I saw my mom use a computer, much less the internet, when I was growing up.
I often wonder how motherhood looked before the days of social media. Before we cared what other people were doing. Before we cared that other people saw what WE were doing.
As a ‘millennial mom’ who started experiencing motherhood as social media really started to explode, I can say, with certainty, that it has impacted the mom (and woman) that I am. Sure, there are a ton of positive things about being a mom in the social media age. Personally, I’ve gotten so much inspiration and ideas from following/watching other moms. I’ve also found a really supportive and helpful community online, and have been able to connect with SO many other women that I wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise. Those aspects of it have been so nice, and really helpful honestly.
But I think there’s another side as well. A side where we can get caught up in the lives of others and measure our worth, and our value, as women and mothers. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a Pinterest idea just as good as the next girl, but when you see perfectly styled images of crafts and kids looking like models eating a 5 course breakfast in their matching pajamas, its easy to look at our own lives and feel a little less ‘extra’. Especially when your kids had oatmeal cakes and kool-aid for breakfast, and the last craft you did involved glue in places that shouldn’t be glued.
This summer, I’ve been reminding myself of this very thing. I made a summer bucket list for our family. Not that I plan on achieving everything on the list, and not that it’s crazy extravagant. I made the list to hold myself accountable to do some fun things with the kids this summer. And not to do them every day. I can remember many summer days when I was younger that I was bored, and came up with my own ideas of ‘fun’. And I swear, usually those were the best days. So along with knocking off some stuff on our bucket list, we’ve had plenty of downtime for the kids to be bored, to whine about being bored, and then to come up with their own kind of fun for a while. And that lets me attempt to clean the house and find food to feed these bottomless pits that live with me.
A few years ago, I deactivated my Facebook account for a whole year, and it was AMAZING. I had no idea how much unnecessary time I spent on there, and how much unnecessary junk I was picking up from there. I was a blissful idiot for a whole year. I didn’t know who was pregnant, who married who, and my prayer request list got a whole lot shorter (you know what I’m talking about ;). And then, I did the same thing with Instagram for a few months too. I was totally unconnected from the world around me (I still had my big flip phone then) and it felt SO good. Honestly, I think my anxiety lessened and my self-esteem increased.
Now, of course, I run a business on social media, so it’s a bit complicated to disappear from the online world. But I think it’s SO important to find a healthy balance with social media. When it’s inspirational, educational, and encouraging, it’s a good place to be. But when we use it to feel allllll of the things we are not, it’s going to leave us unhappy, and feeling inadequate. And that’s not a good place to be.
You are worth more far more than how you measure yourself from a Facebook post or an Instagram square.
XO, Britt.
