I Pray It Stops

I had this outfit post drafted with photos only and no text. I was still brainstorming on what to write about or touch on. This morning when I woke up to another story about cyber bullying, it just kind of spoke to me, and that’s what I decided to write about today so here it goes.

Social media has brought a lot of positives into my life. A career, tons of new friends, ways to stay connected to old friends and family, inspo for my style or my house – the list goes on. But the online world sadly isn’t so innocent. In the past two weeks specifically, I’ve witness first hand some ways that people are using social media and it has not only been eye opening, but blood boiling and so disheartening to be quite frank. As this is my blog, outlet, and sometimes diary, I wanted to share these with you guys today because we NEED to be spreading love and positivity in a world that does nothing but tear us down. I don’t want to see all online platforms or social medias turn into nothing but hateful comments. How ugly would that be.

Two weekends ago while I was out of town for a wedding, I received an email asking for a comment to be approved on my recent blog post “My Life Story“. I have my comments be approved because lots of spam comments come in, and I don’t want my personal blog flooded with spam. This comment however was from “karlie@imsodumb.com” commenting on how painful my post was to read, and how a bag of hammers is smarter than I am. Now, luckily I have a sense of humor and found the humor in the comment, but I couldn’t help thinking that whoever wrote it, went out of their way INTENTIONALLY to hurt me or make me feel stupid. On another note, I have never claimed to be some genius! When I write my blog, I write it with my personal personality and how I talk, I don’t try to write something for school with perfect grammar because that’s just not me. And that is how I want my blog to be. The comment itself wasn’t too hurtful, I have received much worse, but what got to me is that is how some people in this world choose to spend THEIR time. You only get so many moments to live, and that is how you choose to spend it? Hurting other people? And what benefit does it bring to them?

The same weekend, I got a message from someone close to me who is a mom saying that their child was being made a joke over Facebook by PARENTS. This one really threw me for a whirl because as parents or even as adults in general, we are supposed to number one be role models for the youth, but number two lift children up, again in a world that just brings them down. The kids of today grow up in a completely different world than we did, with cyber bullying at their finger tips. How are we supposed to teach them to love themselves and be confident in themselves if we are going online and doing the exact opposite? Especially talking about them. Children these days go through horrible things like depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts – it’s all SO real. We should not be adding to that but doing our best to release them from it.

Today, I woke up to go view one of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow that features bloggers, and noticed that a specific photo of one of the bloggers I personally love and admire had tons of comments. The comments that were previewed all seemed very defensive, like they were having to defend the blogger featured against mean comments. I scrolled up to the very top to go through them and see what was going on and my heart just ached. This specific blogger is naturally super thin, yet she lives a very healthy lifestyle. The commenters all posted about how ‘disturbing’ this photo was, how this account shouldn’t be promoting photoshopped images or anorexia, how they ‘don’t mean to body shame BUT’. I couldn’t help but think of the girl in the image reading this comments and being so hurt by them. There were dozens and dozens of them, and I am even wording them nicely on here. This girl rocks the body that God gave her, she is made in his image and God does not make mistakes. Body shaming is the same whether your commenting on someone being fat, skinny, tall, short – whatever is different and seems unhealthy or not appealing to you. In all cases it is hurtful and I pray this stops.

I pray that not only do these types of comments and conversations stop, but that we can alter our minds to not think that way in the first place. I pray we can LOVE each other and spread positivity. That we can encourage people and build up each other’s confidence because when you really think about it, it is SO freaking cool that out of the billions of people in the world, no two are exactly the same. How unique does that make you?! Ugh, so cool. These are the things we need to focus on. Celebrating our differences, each other’s unique qualities, the things you love about yourself and even the things you don’t love so much. For those of you on the other end and having these hurtful things happen to you, know you are not alone. Know that those things are untrue and lies. Know that you are beautiful, you are LOVED, you are wonderfully made. 🙂

I’m not sure what compelled me to write this post today, but something did and I’m hoping that by people speaking out about cyber bullying or body shaming we can create a more beautiful and loving community – on and offline. I’m also not saying I am perfect and innocent of all this, because I am not! We are in this together and there are so many positives that come from social media that I hope we can keep our focus on!!

If you made it to the bottom of this post, I applaud you! Rant over 🙂 LOVE YOU ALL!

Xx,

Photos x Molly Meeks