Motherhood Uncropped

In a virtual world of “Pinterest perfection,” let’s remember to celebrate the beauty of the everyday, imperfect realities of life and motherhood, even when they don’t seem particularly share-worthy.I have a love/hate relationship with the Internet. With technology in general, really, but especially with the Internet and all of the images on social media that bombard us every day. I love all the things I can look up quickly to answer my four-year-old’s questions about things like “What is a water tower for?” (In case you’re now wondering, here’s the answer.)

I love that I can get ideas for teaching my kids preschool, cute Halloween costumes, and limitless recipes. I love that I’ve learned how to refinish furniture, start a blog, and get my whites truly white again.I hate, however, the unrealistic expectations that come from getting an incomplete glimpse at other people’s lives. We see perfect homes, meals, and…well…everything on Pinterest. We see our old acquaintance’s exotic vacation pictures and triumphs on Facebook. We see headlines about how our sunscreen is killing us slowly and the foods we packed in our kids’ lunches are making them sick.

After seeing all of this enough times, sometimes we’re left feeling like our lives are somehow incomplete or inferior compared to everything “out there.” Like we’re not doing enough. We start to wonder why we can’t get our child to dress in matching clothes, we long to get away to Fiji like the Joneses, and we feel like we’ve failed if we haven’t decorated for fall and made back to school gifts for all our kids’ teachers.

But here’s what we need to remember: there is so much more to each person’s life than what can be captured in a picture, and certainly more than is usually shown within the close-cropped frame of all those “Pinterest-perfect” posts.

That home tour with the perfectly clean kid’s room? Yeah, the kids are probably watching a movie long enough for Mom to take pictures, and once the photo shoot is done the Legos will get spilled back all over the floor.

That beautiful pie with the perfect drizzle of caramel on top? My guess is there is a kid behind the scenes licking the spoon so Mom can grab a quick picture or two.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be sharing our “best of the best” moments with each other. I think it’s important to celebrate the good and there’s definitely something to be said for putting your best foot forward. However, I think we could use a little more celebrating of the beauty of the everyday, imperfect realities of life. We need some more reminders that the messy chaos of life is normal, and we can enjoy and embrace it. It’s not something to be ashamed of or to hide away.

So today I’m breaking with the tradition of posting carefully cropped and edited images, and I’d like to give you a peek into my real, messy, wonderful life.

Outside the edges of this lovely dessert…this crazy, dirty banshee was making faces at me…

In order to document this first attempt at fondant…I had to bribe my assistants with licking the beaters…

And while my basement looked nice and clean when we played this game…it usually looks more like this…Outside the edges of the camera’s frame, there is so much life to be seen, so many more stories to be told. All those seemingly-unimportant, not-picture-worthy moments make up so much of our lives and influence so much of who we are.

Will you join me in a challenge?

Post a picture of your wonderfully imperfect life on Instagram or Facebook and tag it with #motherhooduncropped. 

I look forward to getting a glimpse into all of your beautiful realities and celebrating motherhood with you.

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram to see more of my uncropped (and sometimes still cropped) life and the many little joys I find each day. 

I regularly link up here.