This makes me think of the period when I was going through infertility and feeling tortured by everyone else's baby scan photos, pregnant bump photos, newborn pics, first days of school etc. etc. etc. Social media can be its own special kind of torture 😖
I still post on FB from time to time, mostly for donors and supporters of our ministries here in the Philippines. As you know, I run a school for poor kids and a safehouse for victims. I also run a dive resort which generates income for our ministries. I post beautiful photos of palm trees, gorgeous sunsets, and snippets of my underwater adventures chasing sea turtles and Nemo. All these posts are real and my contentment in life is authentic. But, as you said, it is not the whole story. I also have a daughter I am estranged from because of her long-standing mental illness. It's been four years since we've actually talked. I also have a son who is currently dealing with another serious form of mental illness. When he was a teenager, he was what every parent dreamed of: top of his class, editor-in-chief of the school paper, member of the choir, a math wizard who led the school team to win scholastic bowl awards, and at the time, he was dating one of the most popular and prettiest girls at his high school. He was genuinely liked and admired by peers and teachers alike. I should know, I taught at his high school and I was always proud of him. He went off to Cornell U and graduated with a double degree: Economics and Philosophy. Then he got his MBA from Columbia U and was hired by McKinsey. Yup...McKinsey...one of the top financial consultancy firms that advices its clients from dictators to multi-billion-dollar companies how to become even wealthier, more powerful, and also more ruthless. That's when I stopped talking about my son (or any of my family members) on social media. Because that's also the time when I watched my "golden boy" give in to deep-seated anxieties and a debilitating form of self-loathing that I never thought I would see in him. All my worried attention had been given to my daughter for so many years because it was she who was always getting into trouble since high school. My son was the one I thought I never needed to be concerned about. Now he is the one I think about the most. He quit McKinsey because of the high pressure, the sense of failure they make their employees feel when they make a single mistake, and the utter disregard for the value of human beings who cannot perform at the highest levels. He fell into the deepest depression that I thought he would never come out of it. He has come out of the worst thanks to therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. But it's been two years and he refuses to go back to the working world. He looks at his long list of achievements and he says he takes no pleasure in any of them. He is so lost and spends his days playing Smash Brothers (that's a video game). His wife is a doctor so they're not starving. He also saved money from his days of making six-figure incomes. BUT it is his utter lack of purpose that worries me. His wife is also getting very weary of coming home to a husband who is not the man she married. They used to be go-getters and they met and fell in love while at Cornell. He encouraged her through med school and she pushed him to finish his MBA. But since having a severe mental breakdown while working at McKinsey...he has lost all desire to do anything. It saddens me that I seem to be able to help girls who have been sexually abused and human-trafficked here in the Philippines...but I am clueless how to help my 33-year-old son get his "mojo" back. It's like he has given up on the world and has isolated himself in a world of his own making. We still talk and I try not to judge. I try to be open-minded and available. But I'm at a loss as to how to reach a young man who spent his life running after the American dream...only to find out what a nightmare it really is...and has now retreated to a place I know nothing about. That's why I'm grateful for Substack. I know I can share things here with you and your readers and I won't be accused of being a horrible mother. I promise you I'm not. I'm just a very bewildered one right now. And I know this kind of honest sharing has no place on FB.
I KNOW, as in with zero doubts, that you are anything but a horrible mother. I have met and respected, and even loved, so many mothers and fathers who were wonderful AND had kids that struggle.
I'm so sorry to hear about your son. This is a hard world and I bet he will find his way (he clearly has at least two people who love him dearly).
Thank you. That’s what I’m told. But I think that’s the hard thing for parents. We’re never given guarantees are we? So I just pray to the God I know who is faithful even when my own faith is shaky. And hope that the son who was so full of life and zest will return to us.
It is such a hard thing as a parent, sometimes there's not anything more we can do but be there for support when it is asked for. And it sounds like you are doing just that.
I have been—and probably still am—in kind of a similar place your son is. I know what it feels like to look at your own achievements and hate them with every cell in your body. I know what it's like to wake up and hate everything about your own life, especially yourself. I know what it’s like when the only question in your head is, “What’s the point?”
I have a request. One, don’t push him—to work, to seek help, to do anything at all. If I am right, he is lost. Nothing makes sense to him anymore. Explore with him the answers to the deep, philosophical questions that he might wanna talk about. And never dismiss any of his questions as a joke, or something trivial.
I know it’s incredibly hard to feel so helpless when it comes to your own son, but being able to help survivors in the rest of the world. But I assure you, he will find his way. He just needs to want to get out of that abyss he is currently in. And that is the hardest thing to do.
If you’d like to talk with me or would like me to text your son, I’m more than happy to.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, I only hope you know. My son's crisis was back in 2021 and 2022. He's done a tremendous amount of work and we've all gotten a lot of support, and I am very happy to say he is in a very good place today. I know anything could happen, but for now I'm just staying in the gratitude of where he is this very moment
Whoever came up with reels and highlights needs to burn in hell. I’m sorry to say this but I feel like no good has ever come from those things.
You’re here now writing about the hard stuff, freaking 3x a week for God’s sake! I’m so proud of you. (Take that, Facebook!)
Not everyone can hold the hard things with gentleness and empathy. No wonder we don’t see a lot of such content widely consumed. But the ones who can are what this world needs—what I need.
Well, this is making my eyes well with here. I agree with you that only showing the highlights real does the whole world a disservice. don't get me wrong, I love sharing, and other people's joy, but when that's the only part of your life you show, it doesn't feel quite so good.
I, too, went through that, and am not on any social site except this one. None of my four almost-grown and grown children had what looks anything like picture perfect. No one I knew did either.
What changed was me.
I stopped trying to create it. I stopped caring what it looked like to people who didn't matter anyway. I started learning to lean in and allow instead of fighting like I was in the match of my life every day.
And boy, did that matter. For all of us. And now, with another little who came 12 years after the last, life is easier. Not less hard, but less performing. More real.
Social media is something that helps people stay connected, but I often wonder at what cost...
Good for you for finding your way through this. It sounds like our families have a similar structure to them and I find the same with my youngest. I just don't care anymore. What's happening in other families because the truth is I'll never really know. I've learned to tend to my own and keep the focus there.
People rarely post pictures of themselves unhappy on traditional social media. It's hard not to fall into that trap of comparing your life to all those perfectly happy people doing all those perfectly happy things. And then there's Substack. Writers like you (and, I like to think, me) are putting it all out there. The real stuff. And that's what connects us.
Thank you for so courageously sharing how difficult it was to raise your son, things you wish you had done differently, and how the world of social comparison impacted you. I raised a similar child, made some more mistakes and still struggle at times with the highlight reels we see on social media. Ironically, right after I read your article, I opened social media to look for a specific thing and was caught off guard by yet and another post of yet another peer of my daughters going to med school while she remains jobless trying to figure out what she wants to do in life.
Being a parent, as wonderful as it is, it's so hard. Social media makes it so much harder. I love celebrating in other people's successes, but it can be easy to forget that lots of other things are happening behind the scenes.
I was the kid in this story, ADHD and all, and the rescuing does something that's hard to see from the parent's chair. Every problem smoothed before I reached it was one more piece of evidence about myself I never got to collect. Reading a parent name that without letting herself off the hook is rare.
I'm sorry, he experienced it, just as I'm sorry I didn't see it earlier. I got there with a lot of good help and support and I'm so grateful I did. Parenting has been humbling work in my case (and still, there's nothing I've been more grateful for).
This feels familiar.. We also dealt with different wiring and often found ourselves out of sync with other families. We were very fortunate to find our way to unschooling and a little community of learners who got it and where we could all be unabashedly ourselves. There is something about knowing we're not alone that offers comfort and hope.
Absolutely, and I'm so glad you found what was right for your family. Finding the right community can make all the difference when parenting gets hard.
I have tried social media a few times, and I have never been able to handle it. Seeing other people smiling and going out and living life when I'm depressed and staying at home only hurt my mental health more. Seeing photos of smiling, perfectly behaved kids and hearing what the families are up to made me feel like I was falling as a mother. Overall, Substack is much better. But I'll be honest with you, because this is one place where I can be. I didn't read your recent article about the girls who have known you a long time. I could tell by the title that it would bring up old feelings of loneliness and longing. And reading about your lake house can sometimes be difficult, because I have never been that person to get together with friends and do fun things. (That's on me, though, not you, so keep writing!!) ❤️
I totally get this and I think it's so healthy that you are thoughtful about your social media consumption. I definitely see things online that still make my heart drop a little bit, and there are times in my life. I take a good long break from most social media besides Substack. Unlike you, sometimes I struggle with the content on here. There's no easy answer for any of it, I just do my best to remind myself that any comparison I make on here aren't really fair, but I'm only comparing one tiny aspect of my life to someone else's. Sometimes that helps more than others though.
I miss the early, fun days of social media! When it really did connect far-flung family and friends.
I don't usually post sad things. Partly because of others' privacy, but also because I don't want to be a downer or beg for sympathy. Partly because I treat it as a journal I want to reread, and I don't want to record it all there. It's too big and broad. And maybe because I doubt my right to take up the kind of space that asks for support.
So I'm one of those social media people with a highlight reel of success and happy moments. My heartache hides beneath silence.
I get that and it totally makes sense. I also tend to post my highlights on Facebook as well, though I do so far more sparingly, and often make white hearted self deprecating jokes, trying to point out it's not the whole picture.
But I also know really the best we can do is limit our intake when that's what's healthiest for us, it's just such a strange world to navigate.
For sure. There are certain days I've learned to avoid, such as Thanksgiving with its endless photos of full tables, or Mother's Day, etc. And the rest of the year I just try to check on those I love most and resist the scroll.
“The picture is real. It just isn’t the whole story.” That distinction matters so much. I think we often call what we see on social media “fake,” when much of it isn’t fake at all—it’s simply incomplete. The smiling vacation happened. The graduation happened. The joyful family moment happened. And something painful may have been happening outside the frame at exactly the same time. Perhaps the danger isn’t believing the picture; it’s believing the picture is everything.
YES! That exactly. And of course, but we want to share is the good stuff, but when you're going through the hard stuff, it can be hard to remember that most everybody has their fair share of both.
This was really interesting and gave me words for something I have also experienced but never put words to or sat with. I have also pulled back from my personal social media, enough so that a couple of friends have commented. However, when I do post, I think about the wide spectrum of viewers; those who have more and those who have less, financially, relationally, in terms of health, education, work, and so on! It becomes quite exhausting, to be honest!
It is exhausting. I don't post much on social media anymore, sometimes when I do I make it private so it's just me that gets to see the memories when they come up again. Of course Substack is different because I post it all, the good and the hard.
This makes me think of the period when I was going through infertility and feeling tortured by everyone else's baby scan photos, pregnant bump photos, newborn pics, first days of school etc. etc. etc. Social media can be its own special kind of torture 😖
I went through that. It was pre-social media era, though. Am I dating myself?
Yes you are! I'm sorry to hear you went through that too, but glad to hear you missed the torture by social media ❤
So true. 🩵
❤️
I still post on FB from time to time, mostly for donors and supporters of our ministries here in the Philippines. As you know, I run a school for poor kids and a safehouse for victims. I also run a dive resort which generates income for our ministries. I post beautiful photos of palm trees, gorgeous sunsets, and snippets of my underwater adventures chasing sea turtles and Nemo. All these posts are real and my contentment in life is authentic. But, as you said, it is not the whole story. I also have a daughter I am estranged from because of her long-standing mental illness. It's been four years since we've actually talked. I also have a son who is currently dealing with another serious form of mental illness. When he was a teenager, he was what every parent dreamed of: top of his class, editor-in-chief of the school paper, member of the choir, a math wizard who led the school team to win scholastic bowl awards, and at the time, he was dating one of the most popular and prettiest girls at his high school. He was genuinely liked and admired by peers and teachers alike. I should know, I taught at his high school and I was always proud of him. He went off to Cornell U and graduated with a double degree: Economics and Philosophy. Then he got his MBA from Columbia U and was hired by McKinsey. Yup...McKinsey...one of the top financial consultancy firms that advices its clients from dictators to multi-billion-dollar companies how to become even wealthier, more powerful, and also more ruthless. That's when I stopped talking about my son (or any of my family members) on social media. Because that's also the time when I watched my "golden boy" give in to deep-seated anxieties and a debilitating form of self-loathing that I never thought I would see in him. All my worried attention had been given to my daughter for so many years because it was she who was always getting into trouble since high school. My son was the one I thought I never needed to be concerned about. Now he is the one I think about the most. He quit McKinsey because of the high pressure, the sense of failure they make their employees feel when they make a single mistake, and the utter disregard for the value of human beings who cannot perform at the highest levels. He fell into the deepest depression that I thought he would never come out of it. He has come out of the worst thanks to therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. But it's been two years and he refuses to go back to the working world. He looks at his long list of achievements and he says he takes no pleasure in any of them. He is so lost and spends his days playing Smash Brothers (that's a video game). His wife is a doctor so they're not starving. He also saved money from his days of making six-figure incomes. BUT it is his utter lack of purpose that worries me. His wife is also getting very weary of coming home to a husband who is not the man she married. They used to be go-getters and they met and fell in love while at Cornell. He encouraged her through med school and she pushed him to finish his MBA. But since having a severe mental breakdown while working at McKinsey...he has lost all desire to do anything. It saddens me that I seem to be able to help girls who have been sexually abused and human-trafficked here in the Philippines...but I am clueless how to help my 33-year-old son get his "mojo" back. It's like he has given up on the world and has isolated himself in a world of his own making. We still talk and I try not to judge. I try to be open-minded and available. But I'm at a loss as to how to reach a young man who spent his life running after the American dream...only to find out what a nightmare it really is...and has now retreated to a place I know nothing about. That's why I'm grateful for Substack. I know I can share things here with you and your readers and I won't be accused of being a horrible mother. I promise you I'm not. I'm just a very bewildered one right now. And I know this kind of honest sharing has no place on FB.
I KNOW, as in with zero doubts, that you are anything but a horrible mother. I have met and respected, and even loved, so many mothers and fathers who were wonderful AND had kids that struggle.
I'm so sorry to hear about your son. This is a hard world and I bet he will find his way (he clearly has at least two people who love him dearly).
Thank you. That’s what I’m told. But I think that’s the hard thing for parents. We’re never given guarantees are we? So I just pray to the God I know who is faithful even when my own faith is shaky. And hope that the son who was so full of life and zest will return to us.
It is such a hard thing as a parent, sometimes there's not anything more we can do but be there for support when it is asked for. And it sounds like you are doing just that.
I have been—and probably still am—in kind of a similar place your son is. I know what it feels like to look at your own achievements and hate them with every cell in your body. I know what it's like to wake up and hate everything about your own life, especially yourself. I know what it’s like when the only question in your head is, “What’s the point?”
I have a request. One, don’t push him—to work, to seek help, to do anything at all. If I am right, he is lost. Nothing makes sense to him anymore. Explore with him the answers to the deep, philosophical questions that he might wanna talk about. And never dismiss any of his questions as a joke, or something trivial.
I know it’s incredibly hard to feel so helpless when it comes to your own son, but being able to help survivors in the rest of the world. But I assure you, he will find his way. He just needs to want to get out of that abyss he is currently in. And that is the hardest thing to do.
If you’d like to talk with me or would like me to text your son, I’m more than happy to.
Have a great week.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, I only hope you know. My son's crisis was back in 2021 and 2022. He's done a tremendous amount of work and we've all gotten a lot of support, and I am very happy to say he is in a very good place today. I know anything could happen, but for now I'm just staying in the gratitude of where he is this very moment
Oh T, I was actually replying to @I’m a Survivor, lol.
Regardless, I admire you and your son for everything you guys have worked on and went through together.
Well, that makes a lot more sense, I was confused, but I rolled with it!
😂
Whoever came up with reels and highlights needs to burn in hell. I’m sorry to say this but I feel like no good has ever come from those things.
You’re here now writing about the hard stuff, freaking 3x a week for God’s sake! I’m so proud of you. (Take that, Facebook!)
Not everyone can hold the hard things with gentleness and empathy. No wonder we don’t see a lot of such content widely consumed. But the ones who can are what this world needs—what I need.
Thanks for being here, T.
Well, this is making my eyes well with here. I agree with you that only showing the highlights real does the whole world a disservice. don't get me wrong, I love sharing, and other people's joy, but when that's the only part of your life you show, it doesn't feel quite so good.
Your text-to-speech messages never cease to amuse me.
And it’s he gift that will keep on giving!!
I, too, went through that, and am not on any social site except this one. None of my four almost-grown and grown children had what looks anything like picture perfect. No one I knew did either.
What changed was me.
I stopped trying to create it. I stopped caring what it looked like to people who didn't matter anyway. I started learning to lean in and allow instead of fighting like I was in the match of my life every day.
And boy, did that matter. For all of us. And now, with another little who came 12 years after the last, life is easier. Not less hard, but less performing. More real.
Social media is something that helps people stay connected, but I often wonder at what cost...
Good for you for finding your way through this. It sounds like our families have a similar structure to them and I find the same with my youngest. I just don't care anymore. What's happening in other families because the truth is I'll never really know. I've learned to tend to my own and keep the focus there.
People rarely post pictures of themselves unhappy on traditional social media. It's hard not to fall into that trap of comparing your life to all those perfectly happy people doing all those perfectly happy things. And then there's Substack. Writers like you (and, I like to think, me) are putting it all out there. The real stuff. And that's what connects us.
I totally agree, Substack doesn't feel like social media at all I think for that very reason. Grateful to have connected to writers like you.
Ditto!
Thank you for so courageously sharing how difficult it was to raise your son, things you wish you had done differently, and how the world of social comparison impacted you. I raised a similar child, made some more mistakes and still struggle at times with the highlight reels we see on social media. Ironically, right after I read your article, I opened social media to look for a specific thing and was caught off guard by yet and another post of yet another peer of my daughters going to med school while she remains jobless trying to figure out what she wants to do in life.
Being a parent, as wonderful as it is, it's so hard. Social media makes it so much harder. I love celebrating in other people's successes, but it can be easy to forget that lots of other things are happening behind the scenes.
and sometimes the picture isn't even real.
That is such a good point and so very true.
Yes, the frame is such a miniscule part of the big picture..Parenting is so humbling I agree
I think it's right, a snapshot can't represent a whole life, but sometimes our brains forget that.
Great article.
❤️❤️❤️
I was the kid in this story, ADHD and all, and the rescuing does something that's hard to see from the parent's chair. Every problem smoothed before I reached it was one more piece of evidence about myself I never got to collect. Reading a parent name that without letting herself off the hook is rare.
I'm sorry, he experienced it, just as I'm sorry I didn't see it earlier. I got there with a lot of good help and support and I'm so grateful I did. Parenting has been humbling work in my case (and still, there's nothing I've been more grateful for).
Absolutely beautiful as always!
Thank you my friend (and thank you for sharing❤️)
This feels familiar.. We also dealt with different wiring and often found ourselves out of sync with other families. We were very fortunate to find our way to unschooling and a little community of learners who got it and where we could all be unabashedly ourselves. There is something about knowing we're not alone that offers comfort and hope.
Absolutely, and I'm so glad you found what was right for your family. Finding the right community can make all the difference when parenting gets hard.
I have tried social media a few times, and I have never been able to handle it. Seeing other people smiling and going out and living life when I'm depressed and staying at home only hurt my mental health more. Seeing photos of smiling, perfectly behaved kids and hearing what the families are up to made me feel like I was falling as a mother. Overall, Substack is much better. But I'll be honest with you, because this is one place where I can be. I didn't read your recent article about the girls who have known you a long time. I could tell by the title that it would bring up old feelings of loneliness and longing. And reading about your lake house can sometimes be difficult, because I have never been that person to get together with friends and do fun things. (That's on me, though, not you, so keep writing!!) ❤️
I totally get this and I think it's so healthy that you are thoughtful about your social media consumption. I definitely see things online that still make my heart drop a little bit, and there are times in my life. I take a good long break from most social media besides Substack. Unlike you, sometimes I struggle with the content on here. There's no easy answer for any of it, I just do my best to remind myself that any comparison I make on here aren't really fair, but I'm only comparing one tiny aspect of my life to someone else's. Sometimes that helps more than others though.
I miss the early, fun days of social media! When it really did connect far-flung family and friends.
I don't usually post sad things. Partly because of others' privacy, but also because I don't want to be a downer or beg for sympathy. Partly because I treat it as a journal I want to reread, and I don't want to record it all there. It's too big and broad. And maybe because I doubt my right to take up the kind of space that asks for support.
So I'm one of those social media people with a highlight reel of success and happy moments. My heartache hides beneath silence.
I get that and it totally makes sense. I also tend to post my highlights on Facebook as well, though I do so far more sparingly, and often make white hearted self deprecating jokes, trying to point out it's not the whole picture.
But I also know really the best we can do is limit our intake when that's what's healthiest for us, it's just such a strange world to navigate.
For sure. There are certain days I've learned to avoid, such as Thanksgiving with its endless photos of full tables, or Mother's Day, etc. And the rest of the year I just try to check on those I love most and resist the scroll.
I think that's really the best anyone could do.
“The picture is real. It just isn’t the whole story.” That distinction matters so much. I think we often call what we see on social media “fake,” when much of it isn’t fake at all—it’s simply incomplete. The smiling vacation happened. The graduation happened. The joyful family moment happened. And something painful may have been happening outside the frame at exactly the same time. Perhaps the danger isn’t believing the picture; it’s believing the picture is everything.
YES! That exactly. And of course, but we want to share is the good stuff, but when you're going through the hard stuff, it can be hard to remember that most everybody has their fair share of both.
This was really interesting and gave me words for something I have also experienced but never put words to or sat with. I have also pulled back from my personal social media, enough so that a couple of friends have commented. However, when I do post, I think about the wide spectrum of viewers; those who have more and those who have less, financially, relationally, in terms of health, education, work, and so on! It becomes quite exhausting, to be honest!
It is exhausting. I don't post much on social media anymore, sometimes when I do I make it private so it's just me that gets to see the memories when they come up again. Of course Substack is different because I post it all, the good and the hard.