On Facebook and Healing

Facebook gets a bad rap. It's been around long enough to get a reputation for being a catalyst for cheating, lying, hiding things from loved ones and as a tool to bully and slander. Social media can be a sticky place where truth fades into the reality we want to portray and we have the ability to censor ourselves to allow fringe people in our lives to see only what we wish them to see.
There have been studies done showing FB can provoke anxiety and depression. We look at other people's posts and photos and compare the smiling faces in their photos to our bickering family not captured on film.
Despite all of this, I love social media. I love connecting with people I don't get to see anymore. People I love who would have fallen into the recesses of memory and out of my current life. People I haven't heard from for years show up as a friend request and in moments I get caught up a bit on where they've been and what they're doing now. I've enjoyed the immediate connection to my community that spans continents, socioeconomic class, and age. I've managed to avoid social media drama and instead feel it to be a gift in my life.

Grief has a way of leveling the life you knew, and in the healing there is great opportunity to inventory the life you've known and rebuild the life you were meant to have. Familiarity breeds contempt and in my life, the familiar struggle numbed me against pressing into authenticity and the hard work of looking inward at the broken places needing mending. One of my biggest struggles in my adult years has been the mistaken belief that I was not enough as a mother. I believe this to be a universal struggle for many women and one that can hold us hostage, preventing us from being the mothers we truly are. I've shared before how my first born has had struggles since toddlerhood. At the prompting of a dear friend, I started seeking answers and support when he was just two years old. Sadly, as happens to many mothers, I was brushed off with disdain and told that stricter parenting and the awareness of him 'being a boy' would solve all of the terrifying behavior that I knew at a soul level to be abnormal and dangerous. However, in my vulnerable state, and tender age, I allowed those words to take root and begin growing into a powerfully strong vine that snaked itself around my heart and squeezed the vibrancy out of motherhood. When he was a few short weeks from marking his fourth birthday, well meaning extended ex-family told me the problem was me. If I would change my behavior, and admit my shortcomings then my son would no longer be punished or tormented by the myriad of horrible things he was experiencing. As I had already given space to the other statements by doctors regarding his challenges being a direct result of my parenting inadequacy, the soil of my heart was tilled and ready to receive this final fatal blow to my fragile seed of hope. The story spreads a decade since then and the abbreviated version has me retreating into hurt, anger and sadness. I've since learned none of those things were based in truth. I've since come to realize that God doesn't make mistakes and just as He designed me with purpose, he also gave me the children He gifted me with on purpose. Within me is everything I need to best raise and love the ones I've been honored to birth, and I've worked through the lies of inadequacy and sliced through the poisonous vine that had embedded itself into my heart. I hate that I have spent ten years parenting out of shame and guilt and sadness, but I'm grateful I was able to escape the prison of deception while I still have time to reverse my approach to motherhood.

This is where FB enters the scene. The photos and posts about my children that now forever reside in the interwebs aren't pretend. They aren't staged or prompted. They really happened. The truth is, nothing in life is perfect. No birthday party, no playdate, vacation or outing. There will always be sand in the bathing suit, ants at the picnic, siblings who bicker more than they smile and hug one another, and dirty dishes in the sink after a beautiful birthday supper. But the good stuff is there too. Life then becomes where we put our focus. The photos of my kids playing cards together was real. There may have been arguing three minutes after I snapped it, but that doesn't negate the reality that for a moment, peace hovered like a bird, spreading calm with each thrust of its wings. For me, FB has reminded me I've done something right. It shines bright on a screen and belies my inadequacy. Living with the belief that I'm not enough is a lie that only ties me to being less than I am capable of. My treasure of photos and posts that span years speak to the beauty that really happens when I least expect it. Mothering for me has been messy and hard and at times discouraging, but there is a tangible reminder on my FB page that it's also beautiful and funny and sweet and powerful. I'm grateful for FB. It's helped me stay the course in recovery from drinking in lies never meant for my soul. It's been the antidote for my weary mother's heart and brought a smile where a furrowed brow once was. It's revived the passion I once carried in my chest that was aflame with hope and dreams and expectation. Now those gifts are tempered by age and experience and I'm learning to look to the mundane to find the extraordinary. Facebook is one of the tools that has led me out of that darkness, and I'm forever grateful for its gift.