I know I’ve been mentioning the Mom Grows a Business conference a lot.
I just have one more thing to share from that day.
Before I get to that, I should rewind a little.
I have spent the past 8 years avoiding a camera.
At first, it was because I had gained so much weight after having kids.
I didn’t want there to be a record of what I looked like.
Anywhere.
Ever.
Then, I lost a lot of the weight.
My body looked better.
But now the rest of me looked older.
Wrinkles.
Blech.
I have probably taken, and deleted, thousands of pictures of myself in the past few years.
From many different angles.
Sucking in my stomach.
Sucking in my stomach more.
Angling my head up a little higher.
A little lower.
Ugh.
Look at my neck.
Look at my arm!
Is that a wrinkle?
On my knee?
When the hell did that happen?
No one can ever see that picture.
Then I listened to Sue B. Zimmerman who gave a workshop on Instagram at this conference.
I’m not even on Instagram, and I still don’t know that much about it, but I guess she’s like,
the Instagram Queen.
She said one thing that really struck a chord.
She said to relax about the pictures you take.
You don’t have to take the perfect picture.
We all have wrinkles.
We all have a problem area or two.
Just have fun.
Huh.
She was right.
I have been so paralyzed by camoflauging my self-described faults,
on the quest for that perfect picture,
that I have continued to miss out.
On fun with my kids.
On memories.
My kids don’t care how many wrinkles, or bulges, or chins I have.
But in thirty or forty or fifty years, they will care how many pictures they have.
Of us.
So screw the perfect picture.
Rather than worrying about what my critics might see,
It’s time to focus on what my kids won’t see.
It’s time to document some memories.
Because I’ve already spent way too much time deleting them.
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Great point! Plus, kids seem to see us differently than we see ourselves. My 5-year-old is my biggest ego booster. If she comes home from school at 3 p.m. and I’m not in my pajamas, then “Mommy looks fancy today.” If I put on lipstick before our family photo, then “that’s the picture where Mommy looks beautiful.” I wish she could have followed me around high school…but then I guess that would have created a whole host of other issues. -Meredith