Why social media sucks for women...

We have all been there, in the throes of self- flagellation, our children leaving hurricanes of crumbs and syrup, our spouses closing a door on us, either literally or figuratively, and we make the ultimate mistake. We open up Facebook. We do it in search of validation, or friendship, and we end up falling deeper into the spiral of self doubt, and I am angry. I am angry that women are already told how high the bar is set from an early age. We should be this thin, this smart, this athletic, this strong. We must be domestic, but not too domestic, as our feminist foremothers would have fought for naught. We must work, but not too much, or our children will suffer. We must live for our kids, and our spouses, but always remember to put ourselves first. The lists of suggestions on how we should be better mothers, better wives, better females is endless, and the pieces of advice seem to contradict each other so fast and so furious, that we realize we must make up our own rules.

What we see on social media is cruel and often unrealistic, and while our sane minds would tell us this, we are often not in our sane minds, and we are easily led to believe that our own lives are not stacking up to those around us. The glossy pictures of couples on a beach, cocktails at tanned feet, happy children doing educational things, the promotions, the raises, the docile puppies, the funny memes, the inspirational quotes set in front of sunsets.... it is a veritable bar graph reminder of our own failures. When our own marriages are hanging by a thread, and our last cocktail was a hastily thrown down glass of guilt laden wine when everyone was asleep, or our children are glued to iPads, or stomping on each other with cleats on. When our own dogs are eating our favorite shoes, or splattering diarrhea across the floor as their hip dysplasia takes them down, or when our own jobs are causing us to dread leaving the house. By signing on to other people's optimism, we have allowed ourselves to be held hostage by our realities.

This does not mean we must hold the happy posters in contempt. They do not want to paint themselves as floundering. They do not want their long distance friends, or old lovers, or third cousins to think they haven't managed to do it all. I am equally as guilty. I take selfies from the neck up, because it is better than showing the weight that has settled on me over these middle age years. I say funny, snarky things, because it is easier to put frosting on things, than to eat them raw. But as women, especially, I think it is time we start recognizing that our sisterhood is our bond, and that it is our job to raise support beams, rather than take an axe to the tentative holds we each have on our lives.

When a friend comes home with a baby, and she has a vision of a Pottery barn world, with sunlight streaming in the windows, and a cooing, wondrous infant, it is our job to help her through when she realizes that she may break down. That some babies don't sleep well, and sometimes there are medical scares, and fights with equally exhausted partners, and that the hormones that have decided to throw a shitstorm of a kegger in their already fried brains are going to trick them into believing they can't do this- it is up to us to remind them they can. That we had a rough time, too. That our social media pictures were a little bit of bullshit, a little bit of wishful thinking for a while. That it will get better eventually, sometimes even blissful, but that it is ok to break down. It is merely what we do in between the breakdowns that matters.

When a friend is dealing with the end of a relationship, and cannot see the patches of light above the forest it is our job to remind her of the beautiful parts of herself she has forgotten. That those tributes to husbands, and romantic anniversary and date posts are one day of a year that could be fraught with tension, fear, and a lot of one steps at a time. That it is ok sometimes to admit that marriage is harder than we expected it to be, that making a decision to be with someone for a lifetime when we are barely old enough to have figured ourselves out can be detrimental to our growth as individuals. We can remind them that we have all had our doubts, that despite that one time when we had wild hotel sex and bragged about it, or that month we played rummy till we reached 100,000 points, or that time we felt appreciated and talked about it on facebook, there are fissures in every relationship. And that we are there to watch Steel Magnolias whether it works out for them or not.

When a friend find out her child is not going have an easy life, when the doctors have told them something so devastating, we lower our voices to speak of it, or when developmental milestones are not coming easy, or school is not working out the way it was expected, it ok if we haven't lived through the same heartache. It is not ok to google a random quote and stick it on their Facebook page in lieu of sending out a personal message of love and support. Because chances are, that mom may not want to talk a lot right now. They might want to cry a lot, and go into a tiny shell, in a world far away, and we have to be ok with it, but we also have to make sure that they have what they need, and what they need is to know the world, the friends, will still be there when they find the strength to crawl back out to us.

I find this planet to be a large and often scary place, and i acknowledge that I sound like an old fogey when I say the digital age has it more personally daunting. I have a lot of nightmares, and I have a lot of guilt. I worry that my kids are entitled, I worry that I don't spend enough time cleaning my house. I worry that I am too social, and then I worry when I feel like being a hermit. The only time I worry a little less is when the women in my life tell me that I am not alone. That being a supermom, a wonder woman, isn't about being perfect, but about knowing when I have tried my hardest, knowing when I need to be first on the list for a while, about knowing that I am more than the sum of my posts on social media, whether positive or negative.

I am on a quest to pare down my time in front of my phone, and to shut off words of strangers. I sometimes wonder if a renaissance is needed, for all of us to go back to a time when we had control over our days, and the phone was connected by a twenty foot cord in the kitchen, to make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible to spend hours gossiping. If I can be a small part of that rebirth, I would like to vow to do it now. For all of my female friends, I have built my aforementioned quilt quite well, and it big enough to keep us all warm for a while.