One of my favorite people in the world is Brene Brown. She has taught me that vulnerability is the path to whole hearted living. I strive to be vulnerable, but to be honest, I am terrible at it. I’ll keep trying but it’s really  hard work. One of the things that keeps me trying to be authentic is that I know that the beautifully curated lives I see on social media are often far from the reality. That’s part of why I am writing this. So often we don’t know what is really going on with someone and what we believe is happening is actually not even close to the reality.

There are many powerful examples of this in my own life. I had a friend from graduate school who rarely posted on social media but I remember seeing this beautiful picture of him with a girlfriend and some happy pictures of them doing fun things around their beautiful home in the Northwest. I assumed based on these photos that my friend was in a happy place, living a happy life. Not too...

For part two of mom shaming, I really wanted to explore why we mom shame. It feels terrible and we know that, so why do we do it? In part one, I told a recent story of how my sister was mom-shamed on social media by “friends.” You can read about it here if you missed it. I had been mulling over this topic for a long time, but when it landed on my sister I couldn’t pass it up. The Big Sister Bear in me wanted to come out with claws but I once I took a moment, I didn’t think that would be actually helpful. Shaming shamers is not going to change what has become an epidemic in our culture. It happens subtly in face-to-face interactions, but in the land of social media, it is constant. CONSTANT. And if we are honest, in our heads, sometimes it’s worse. And we all do it. You know you’ve had that thought, “I would never…. give juice boxes, let my kids watch ___, let my kids eat ____, do ____.” So what? When we all know what it feels...