The Internet Is Full of $*!# and So Am I
We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real . . . and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists.—Thomas Merton
A couple years ago, NPR reached out to me for a segment they were doing about the holidays. They wanted to interview me for tips on how moms could stay organized and calm in the midst of the season. I said yes, being the NPR nerd that I am, and then promptly forgot to put the interview in my calendar.
I had absolutely no business giving any shred of advice on successfully navigating the holiday season. I have a massive meltdown pretty much every year mid-December. I predictably overbook myself, take on too much, and fail to say no. This particular year was no exception, and my stress was affecting my health. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, my immune system was shot, and I had developed shingles, a reactivation of the chicken pox virus that manifests in mind-numbingly painful blisters. Shingles is, according to Google, thought to be brought on by stress.
One morning, a few days after NPR booked me to do the segment, I stepped out of the shower and began applying calamine lotion to the rash across my chest and stomach when my cellphone rang from a New York number. I picked up, thinking it was my agent. An NPR host told me to hold. I would be live in two minutes.
The calamine lotion was still wet so I couldn’t get dressed. I turned, and on the other side of the sliding glass door that separates the bathroom from the outside I saw the guy who mows my lawn step into the backyard. I couldn’t close the curtains without exposing my body even further, so I scurried into the toilet alcove, which would at least partially hide me from view.
There, naked, with sopping wet hair and covered in calamine lotion while hiding from a man mowing the grass in my backyard, I gave a national interview on how other people could stay sane during the holidays, including tips on mindfulness, self-care, and slowing down. I hung up and thought . . . I AM SO FULL OF SHIT.
Back in my twenties, I loved to scour through home design magazines for inspiration. Today I am just as likely to peruse Pinterest, home decor websites, or foodie Instagram accounts as I am to read a magazine. The shift from magazines to social media has spawned a marketplace where anyone can create inspirational content. I love the fact that the Internet allows creatives to publish their own work. We are looking at real people, real homes, and often, real families. We think.
As a personal blogger, I’ve been in conversations with many other bloggers who have noticed this shift. Blogging started out as a kind of online journal, but for many it has morphed into more of an online magazine—little snippets of real life that perhaps don’t paint the full picture. It’s the highlight reel, and honestly? Sometimes it’s very staged.
I’ve gotten to know enough social media mavens to know that under that perfectly clean kitchen counter is probably a pile of recently cleared junk. I’ve met the homeschooling mom who has a hired “governess” to teach her kids while she blogs. I know Instagramers who take a week’s worth of wardrobe photos at once, with their hair and makeup professionally done, and then post them every day with an #outfitoftheday tag so we think that’s how they always look. I know the mommy blogger who takes her kids to open houses and takes photos in those perfectly staged houses to present the illusion that’s her life. I’ve met the blogger who portrays her marriage as amazing and fun while in real life, things are strained and distant. (Oh wait. That last one was me.)
I worry about the false messages about life, and specifically about motherhood, these influencers are collectively sending. Many of the early visions I had for my own family were drawn from images of motherhood presented in curated feeds that highlighted a perfect domestic existence, complete with sunkissed lighting, designer clothes, and slightly mismatching West Elm pillows. I wanted those aesthetics for my own life. Creating those scenes would make me a good mom.
Then I had children. As it turns out, children arrive with personalities and needs that do not cooperate with our fantasies. My children were more interested in cartoon-emblazoned plastic toys than the artisan-crocheted dolls I bought on Etsy. They preferred SpongeBob to nature documentaries. They turned up their noses at vegetables or any kind of sauce, requesting instead the Bland Beige Food Group. They were uninterested in quiet family meals. Our table felt more like the breakfast scene from Cheaper by the Dozen than something painted by Norman Rockwell.
Motherhood is beautiful, but it’s also messy. In fact, happy family life should be messy. A lifestyle of only perfect moments is not a lifestyle I’m familiar with, nor is it one in which kids can really thrive.
On any given day, my sink is full of dishes. My house is clean exactly twice a month, every other Friday afternoon after the cleaning lady has come. The night before we all do a mad dash to clean the house before the cleaning lady comes because most rooms have gotten too messy in the course of two weeks for her to even be able to mop the floor. Most days there is a pile of clean laundry sitting on the sofa waiting to be put away. There is a chair next to my bed that solely exists for me to pile clothes on it. This chair is NEVER empty. I have never sat in that chair.
In the dining room there is a credenza whose sole purpose is being a place to pile papers. About once a month I will go through the papers and realize all of the things I forgot to do/sign/deal with. My junk drawer is so full that you have to rattle it a bit to open it, and every pen in there inexplicably does not work. Despite my daily nagging, there are approximately twelve pairs of shoes scattered across my living room floor, and probably more than a dozen abandoned cups. So many cups, you guys.
As the kids are getting older we also have real-life dramas. Broken hearts and social issues and challenges in school and therapy appointments. We are far from perfect. And yet I think we are very typical. We’re an average, okay, mostly happy family. And my ongoing challenge has been learning that this is enough.
It’s still a constant temptation to compare my life to the “highlight reel” people post online. Once I was scrolling through Instagram and saw photos of a friend on a Hawaiian vacation with her kids. And as I looked at their photos, I had this pang of jealousy. I was thinking, Wow. They really go on a lot of trips. I wish I was able to do that. I want to be a family that travels more. They look like they are having so much fun.
Then I realized that I was looking at my phone at an Airbnb in Palm Springs where I was staying with my kids for a week. I was jealous of someone else’s family vacation while I was on my own awesome vacation. That is how absurd social media FOMO can be.
The truth is that contentment is an inside job. So is authenticity. Validation doesn’t come from magazines, blogs, Facebook feeds, or even your best friends. It doesn’t come from looking like you have it all together online. It’s easy to spend our time trying to manufacture the visuals of contentment, or longing for the images of happiness that permeate social media. It’s harder, but more rewarding, to dig into our own lives to do the work of finding gratitude and satisfaction in our private moments.
The struggle to be content and happy with your imperfect self is a journey. Over the years, I’ve worked hard at settling into peace with myself as a “good enough” mom, while maintaining some semblance of my own identity outside of parenting. That’s what raging against the minivan has come to mean to me. It’s the quiet rebellion against obsessing over the optics and outcomes of motherhood, from the kind of car we drive to looking like we have it all together. It’s about opting out of the comparison game and giving ourselves permission to fail, to get back up, and to love with our whole hearts again the next day.
Copyright © 2020 by Kristen Howerton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
