Do you ever have to take breaks from Instagram or Facebook because you find yourselves comparing? Do you sometimes feel like you need to do more because you see other people doing so much?
Me too. And it has had me thinking a lot about our Instagram/ social media and balancing what people want to see and what I want people to see with reality. I think it is hard because, if you post a million pictures of your laundry piles, fridge with handprint smudges and scraped knees, people aren’t going to love that.
But, I really appreciate genuine content and I know you probably do too. As I have thought a lot about it, I thought: What would you see if you took even just one step back from the pictures you see on Instagram? What would happen if the picture was taken with a wide angle camera lens? If the person posting is anything like me, the wide lens would show a little more mess, a little less curated, a little more real.
What you are seeing in posts might be very real but so is the mess that is right outside of the frame. So, Jennie and I want to share some of that with you. And we want you to feel safe sharing some of that with the world too. It feels so comforting to hear other moms don’t quite have it all figured out either. Maybe your leggings are pulled up a little higher to tuck in the jiggle left behind from your stretched out belly skin. Maybe there’s laundry to be done but you saw a teaching opportunity with your kiddo and took that instead. We want to share just a step back and say “Hey, this is real. I really made this cute kids toy, but if I stepped back just one step while taking a picture of it, you would see my sweet, sweet boy screaming because the popsicle he asked for is too cold. :)” True story. We always want to put being real over being perfect. You will never find a feed of perfectly curated and filtered pictures on our feed. You will never find us pushing things we don’t truly love. We really do want to be a space for all moms to feel safe and seen. So, We will go first..
Jennie and I plan on using the hashtag #WideLensWednesday and posting a picture with a swipe right of what was just outside the frame. We won’t do this every week, but we do want to continue to be real with you. And if you feel the need share a little bit of extra reality sometimes, we hope you will.