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What a Curated Little Life.

Yesterday I was looking through my Instagram, at my little curated squares capturing my life. A life without financial strain, with perfect health, no conflicts, no stress, no burden. A life where even loss is painted as beautiful and easy, and gain is painted as perfect and without cost.


What a curated little life, what a white lie those little squares hold.


The aesthetic picture of my coffee, in front of a beautiful potted plant (that's half dead & sitting on my apartment windowsill, but that was cropped out.)


The smiling picture of my family at church with a caption like "Life is a gift" (when just the day before I had to be put on antidepressants, so I didn't take my life, but that part was obviously left out.)


The picture of my nourishing meal with the sun hitting just right saying "whipped up some dinner for the fam" (when it took me way too long to make dinner because I kept getting upset by my kids endless list of afternoon requests when they should have been the focus.)


Why do I feel compelled to share parts of my story but through rose colored glasses?


Why do we all do this, and perpetuate the cycle of unrealistic expectations, and feed the beast of comparison?


Often, especially as women, we feel the need for perfection. This isn’t just because it builds us up, but because perfection is often expected of us. Part of this perfection expectation stems from the western image of the domesticated housewife, another part stems from the fact that we live in an instant gratification world and are expected to be able to control and fix all things, and the main reason we feel this perfection expectation is actually because of you and I, and our curated little squares.


However, the alternative to the curated little feed also doesn’t sound ideal, everyone trauma dumping for all to read doesn’t sound comfortable, inspirational, nor enjoyable. It would be honest, but it also unfortunately still feeds the comparison beast but elevating ourselves with a false sense of pride instead of making us feel less than.


So I guess my point isn’t advocating for brutal honesty online, nor do I want our pretty pictures to go away, but I guess the call for you, and for me, is to not look at others little curated lives online as the complete picture.


Next time you see that perfect bowl of lunch your friend posted, realize there are dirty dishes in the sink too. And next time you see perfectly angled photos of little ones peacefully playing, just know that those little ones also cry, have demanding needs, and probably don’t peacefully play all of the time. When you get flooded with perfectly risen and scored sourdough loaves, just know there were ugly loaves and frustrations and messes that definitely led up to that point of a beautiful one.


The full picture of another’s story is never completely perfect. We know that when we share our fractured beauty online, but let’s remember that when we are faced with others curated little lives, it’s only a fragment of reality.


Reality for everyone is always both beautiful and messy. Let’s remember this with tenderness and dignity, honoring others hard work to get them to a place of beauty to share, and holding honor for yourself- knowing all you pour in behind the scenes that make fragments of your life beautiful and worthy of curation and sharing.


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If you want to follow along with our curated little squares, you can do so here.


If you want to read more about the real life behind the scenes you can do so here.


& if you want to read about our projected work as missionaries in Mexico & our move coming up in less than a month, you can do so here.


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