It's Okay To Not Want To Fake It Anymore

I wrote this back in March and it was just sitting in my "writing" folder on my Google Drive. I thought I had already posted it, but apparently not.

Sometimes, I get tired of "lying" about how I'm doing and sick of pretending that everything's fine. Maybe March was a rough month for me, it's been seven months, so I really can't remember. The past two years seem to be a blur with several significant events standing out within the blur. They're more like blotches.

This is what I wrote:


It’s okay to not be okay
As we work through our healing, others may expect us to move faster, be happier, forgive sooner, and trust easier than we can. Healing comes at its own pace. We cannot rush the timeline. It is not someone else’s timeline. It is God’s and ours.

People will try to tell us what we “should” be grateful for. While that is not a horrible mindset, it doesn’t validate our feeling like we’ve been through a horrible experience, feeling like our lives have been a lie, or feeling like we’re completely lost and alone.

As women, we worry about how other people will feel about anything and everything. We even worry about how others feel about how we feel. It’s time to stop feeling responsible for others’ feelings.

That’s not to say that we should stop being kind and considerate or stop treating others with respect. This is simply to say that we will treat others how we want to be treated. Can you imagine how much better the world would be if we were completely honest about how we were when someone asked us?

When people ask how we’re doing, usually, we say that we are “okay.” The reality is that saying we are “okay” continues to invalidate how we are feeling. Instead, occasionally, it’s okay to speak our truth. We know that we won’t feel that way forever, but, at that moment, that’s how we feel.

If you asked someone how they were doing and they said something like, “You know, I’m just not feeling motivated today.” How would you respond? Could you relate to that feeling?

Many of us can. We have all felt unmotivated, sad, depressed, angry, anxious, excited, fearful, joyful, etc. at some point.

Now, this may not be something you would want to say to random strangers, or to someone who is totally unsafe, but the next time your best friend asked you how you were, and you were completely honest about it, how do you think they would respond?

It’s the opposite of what we’ve been experiencing with our husband. For many of us, we’ve been saying we’re okay for a long time, for some of us, it’s been a couple of decades.

You’re probably thinking, “This is crazy! I don’t want to tell anyone about how I’m really feeling?”

The next time someone asks you how you’re doing, suppose you gave them one of these responses:

“I’m feeling ungrateful today.”

“I’m feeling sad today.”

“I’m struggling today.”

“I’m just not feelin’ it today.”

Follow this up with, “… and that’s okay.” We can say this because, as previously stated, this is a temporary feeling. We will probably feel differently tomorrow. If they ask why, we can tell them or not.

We have been through something horrible, and it’s okay to feel it. It’s also okay to acknowledge it and voice it.


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