“A cover is not the book” - We watched Mary Poppins at the weekend and this song from the film seems fitting for today’s post!
I touched on how this online world can be both great and awful for our mental health at different times. It can be motivating on the good days, but it can make you second guess yourself on the bad.I shared a few still images on my stories from Saturday, we went for a walk around the lake with the boys. A nice man offered to take this photo for us. Another nice man offered us bread for the boys to throw to the ducks. We found some cool vintage Lego in the charity shop. We had Adams parents over in the evening and drank gin, played games, researched our family tree a bit, ate chips from the chip van. And then on Sunday we made chocolate cornflake nests with the boys, did colouring, sat and watched Mary Poppins together and got ourselves organised for Monday as you do on a Sunday. Sounds and looks like a pretty perfect weekend eh?
Well, it was when I reflect on it like that. And I always try to because that’s what keeping a positive mindset is about. It’s about being grateful for those moments and with my whole heart, I really really am. And I could have posted this picture with those words about our weekend, but...
I also want you to know that in between those perfect moments there were arguments around the lake because Adam and I were in different moods, there were tantrums that’s lasted close to 2 hours and only stopped when our little boy fell asleep and it started again as soon as we opened our eyes in the morning. There was lots of squabbling between the boys that drove us quite insane this weekend. There was lots of ugly shouting from me because I was anxious that the boys were too close to the lake on their scooters. There was an outright refusal to even try dinner from one of our boys. There were many moments we all just wanted to be alone, to just go and crawl into bed. There were tears as I fought off moments of completely out of the blue anxiety and exhaustion that took my breath away. There were refusals to do homework and lots and lots of moments where I just wished I could press reset on the weekend!
So why am I telling you this?
I’m sharing this because I want to remind those of you who may be scrolling through social media during one of your exhausted, low mood, low energy moments that life for EVERYONE is up, down and all around. And even though social media is full of many smiley faces and picture-perfect moments, there’s always more to the story than just the cover!
Thank you for reading. Alex xo
