The Online Versus “Real” Persona
Social media is a carefully curated selection of content.
I was perusing Instagram the other day and scrolled past a post from a woman that I know personally. She is an instructor at my yoga studio and also has a blog and following. Her post was along the lines of “There are no bad days. We put a category on our days. It’s up to us to keep it within the moment and not turn it into a bad day.”
I immediately thought “What utter nonsense.”
I sent it to a friend of mine who is a fellow loss mama. My daughter, Nelle, was stillborn at 21 weeks of pregnancy and my daughter Iris was lost at 16 weeks of pregnancy. My friend’s son was stillborn on his due date, and she is also a licensed therapist. She was equally infuriated and we assumed that the poster had never gone through anything difficult in her life. The post reeked of ignorance.
I have been through bad days, and I could not “happy think” my way out of that bad day. I have been through depression and anxiety, where the chemistry of my body had changed and there was nothing I could do to control the thoughts in my head. The implication of the post was that if we had bad days we were just not trying hard enough, and it was offensive.
