Falling into the trap of a digital motherhood.

I got sucked into the one thing I swore I wouldn't, and it changed me.

Hi there! I’m Hunter. I’m a mother of a two-year-old daughter, married to my British husband, and we live in Northwest Florida along the beautiful white, sandy beaches. I share about sacred & slow living as well as my own personal journey in being a mother and a creative. Make sure to subscribe to have my posts delivered directly to your inbox. I’m so glad you’re here.

I swore I wouldn’t do it, that I was impenetrable. I would only follow my instincts, I wouldn’t worry about how other people were living, and parenting.

That worked exceptionally well when motherhood was “easy” and when all I had to worry about was my own self in the experience. Then, my easy-going baby became a toddler, and my world shifted.

Toddlerhood has been so much fun, but also the most exhausting time for me. The emotions are high for everyone involved, there are boundaries to be learned and subsequently broken repeatedly, there are many very public displays of intense emotion (again, from all parties), and I quickly found myself questioning every decision I made, every thought I had, every opinion I shared.

Having a toddler has humbled me, and while it is such a beautiful time it’s also been incredibly hard. So I did the thing I said I would not do, and I fell deep into the trap.

The trap of living in the digital age of motherhood.

I’d be spending my mornings in battle with my very vibrant little one, and then spend a good chunk of her nap time scrolling on that app that shall not be named. I’d see mamas who had no screen time, or who fed their child only the highest-quality foods of grass-fed liver and sourdough discard crackers. I’d watch as they went on hours-long hikes each day and connected with their community of homeschool families that all thought the same as them. I’d see them share about the perils of having too many toys in the home and be told I either need to become a minimalist and purge or rotate weekly. While all of these things are great and wonderful, they are not my reality.

And instead of pulling myself out of the fog and saying, “Great for them! Our life looks a bit different, and it’s great for us!” I would spend hours of my day nitpicking all the ways I am parenting wrong. And blaming myself for literally everything.

“I don’t make healthy enough food all the time.”

“I’m not engaged enough.”

“I’m not teaching her enough.”

“I’m failing her by doing this or that.”

Even though I do a damn good job (if I do say so myself) of raising my sweet little girl, I suddenly questioned myself for everything. I need to try harder, I need to do more, I need to be more. And therefore, be someone I’m not.

All this led me to feel depressed and inadequate.

It’s only been the past couple of days that I’ve realized I was even in said trap. I had this moment where I looked at our life and saw things I’d like to improve upon (more time outside, always more time outside) but then also snapped out of it and realized, “Wait, we have a really wonderful life and my daughter is experiencing a really beautiful childhood.” We have fun, we laugh, we watch movies together, we walk to the park (usually multiple times a day), we go out for mini-adventures, we eat takeout and we make smoothies. She’s healthy, she’s happy (for the most part), and she feels seen and loved.

I got so caught up in the perfectionism of someone else’s parenthood that is portrayed through a screen, that I forgot about the magic held within my own motherhood journey. And I reminded myself that they too have imperfect moments. Their little ones most likely have tantrums, and they have hard days as moms. They experience guilt in their own ways, they don’t make the right choices 100% of the time, they just choose to not show it online.

Their babies chose them, and mine chose me. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

I find that it’s so easy to get caught up in someone else’s life and instantly put them on a pedestal for how they are living, and immediately compare myself as not living up to my own potential. But I’m trying to remember that I am only seeing maybe 5% of their day, and who in the world knows what the rest is made up of?

I met up with a friend last night and she was telling me about her trip to visit her nephews. She talked about how much energy they had and a lot of our conversations centered around how much alike they were to where mine is right now in the toddler stage. Then, she told me that her sister has a screen-free, all-natural home. I instantly laughed because I was blaming myself for the “lazy” ways I parent, but our kids sounded like they were experiencing so much of the same, and yet they were living in two very different homes. She smiled at me and said, “All toddlers go through the same things.”

I realized then that I had become so disconnected from the reality of raising little ones. And that maybe we’re all just doing the best we can to make these tiny humans feel loved, and seen, and accepted. We’re making choices that feel good for us, and the problem isn’t necessarily what those choices are, but is more about the energy with which we make these choices.

I began to understand that the damage isn’t in how I choose to parent, but that damage can actually come from when I step out of what is authentic to me and my own child’s experience and try to force us into a life that isn’t ours. Sure, I can have things I want to strive for and ways I want to be a better mom, but I also have to hold onto the belief that I am doing right by us, first and foremost.

So I closed out the app, I turned off the phone, and I took my sweet, spirited, incredible toddler to the park. I looked into her eyes while she sat down across from me in the grass, and she instinctively came and sat in my lap, and I held onto my entire world in one person. I know that we’re meant to be, she and I. And there’s no other girl in the world I’d rather raise than this one, in this life, just as we are now.