I wrote a post recently about How to Make it in the Mom Club!

When I wrote it I was only speaking from my own experience. I was a mom at a very young age and really didn’t have much experience with female friendships as an adult woman. That post has now become one of the most read and commented on posts on my blog. Even exceeding the popular FAT post. But the response to this post has been very interesting. Women from all walks of life, not just moms, are saying the same things.

They are leaving most social situations with other females feeling exactly the same way I did that day. Like a fraud, empty, and yucky inside. Like they had spent all of that time pulling their best display pieces out of the cabinet. People are exhausted with this type of surface level bull honkey they are receiving during these social encounters.

I think to a major degree social media is to blame. For example, when you’re a blogger it’s your job to make people WANT to read what you have to say, right? Well to do that you’ll need to build your audience. You want a large Facebook fan page, thousands of people following you on Instagram, twitter follows, and subscribers. It’s the same for any business really.

We measure our value on how many people see our message!

But if you do any kind of reading on how to gain more of these followers you’ll see that you have to NORMALIZE.

You have to be one of the cool kids. If you want the people of Instagram to like you- then you need to have a feed with highly curated, color thematic, perfectly edited photos of you doing or having amazing things. People won’t like your Instagram photos if they don’t match your brand

If you want people to pin or follow you on Pinterest you have to write a specific kind of article and display it in a specific sort of way. If you step outside of those boundaries people will stop following you or you’ll never see any kind of growth in your stats.

And as normal everyday humans we do this too.

We post pictures of our children in their best outfits, perfect hair, and adorable faces. We don’t post the thousands of out takes. Or talk about the 20 minutes that they laid on the grass refusing to sit up.

We take these perfectly curated pictures of our kitchen counters and spill flour on purpose to make things look so… artsy. It’s only one small square of the kitchen that needs to be clean and picked up for the picture.

We don’t show the rest of the kitchen that looks like a bomb exploded.

We take pictures of our bed with a coffee cup resting on it. Come on people… no one can actually rest a FULL coffee cup on the bed!

WE FILTER EVERYTHING!

No one is allowed to see us failing… miserably. We have to cover that up because people only want to see the positive. They only want to HEAR the positive. We are so consumed with sweeping up after ourselves that we literally cannot handle anyone else dumping anything into our lives. We can’t accept your sadness or your struggle because we’re too consumed with covering up our own. So we call these people toxic or discouragers.

But the real truth is that we ALL struggle. Like A LOT!

We fill our faces with the non-sense that Pinterest tells us. We’re always looking for ways to be better than what we are right now. And for the most part, that’s good.

But what about when it’s not good.

What about when we need to admit that we’re struggling?

What about when we need someone else’s help to get through something that hurts?

What about when we’re in serious need of a REAL friend?

The things is, we’re so afraid to be real and broken that we’re not even reaching out when we need someone. We’re so afraid to be judged that we sit in our own pain for fear of what someone might think.

If you share too much struggle on Facebook then you’re oversharing. Or you just need to find your boot straps.

We sit and suffer alone, feeling as if NO ONE understands our struggles.

But the truth is… there is someone who knows how you feel. They’re just afraid to talk about it too! Because it makes them look less pulled together than they want people to know about.

Frankly…. I’m over it! And I think so many other people are over it too!! WE JUST WANT TO BE REAL!

SO WHAT NOW?

So I looked around a bit to try to find something that felt like a place for real people to share real life struggles and find support and solidarity.

Guess what I couldn’t find it! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised!

So like all of these new adventures… I decided to create it! And if you feel like you get me… and you are ready to just be real and yourself and meet other real, broken, so not together people then I’d like you to consider joining.

AN INTRODUCTION

I built the field. I am hoping it makes you want to come play.

We need to step up and believe that dropping the facade is exactly what the world needs. We need to make noise. We need to stand out. We need to call people to a place of honesty and authenticity. We can’t sit still any longer… that’s not going to get us anywhere!! We have to MOVE!! MOVE! MOVE!!!! So from the depths of my heart I’m starting this movement. Please join us!

This group will encourage you. Challenge you! Allow you to be fully authentic.

Now it doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk face. Everyone needs to remember their manners.

But Mom’s we’ll ask you to show us what your real life looks like! Because we all know it doesn’t look like Instagram says it does.

We’ll ask you to reach out to someone else and tell them you care about them and that they can be real.

We’ll share our real lives and try to build a community of people who want to live authentically.

So help me start a movement! Start using the hashtag #lifeunfiltered!

Start making an intention to be more real in your everyday encounters…. and come join together with us as we make a move to live

 

LIFE UNFILTERED!

#sonottogether