In defense of the pretty, staged, lifestyle Mommy blogs because I like them now, ok?

These days it's cool to be uncool, hip to be nerdy and good to be bad. These days, a mess isn't messy it's....authentic. For the most part I like this trend because I like brutal honesty. But I've also experienced a massive reversal of opinion regarding super-pretty-stagey-Mommy-blogs. I used to secretly despise these lifestyle Mommy bloggers. Well, maybe it wasn't such a secret, oh look! I blogged about it . Now? These lifestyle people kinda save my life. Because My Brian needs pretty things.

If you live inside My Brian (INSIDE JOKE! read yesterday's post!), you need pretty things to keep you sane. I say this as someone who has been to rehab and needed pretty pictures from lifestyle magazines to give her hope that Beauty Existed. I needed to believe there WAS such a thing as tidy kitchens with frilly curtains on the windows and ripe, homegrown vegetables artfully arranged on pretty vintage plates.

It didn't matter if it was fake. It didn't matter if it was staged. It was the IDEA of beauty that kept me from wanting to hurt myself. Just the IDEA that maybe, someday, I'd be sane enough to want to plant my own vegetable garden like the one I saw in Sunset magazine helped me survive another day inside My Brian.

Sometimes you hang onto those ideas and even if it's fake, even if you KNOW it was STAGED by like twenty designers, you just don't care. You look at that picture in Pottery Barn magazine or on your favorite lifestyle blog and it saves your life a little bit. At least for the next twenty minutes. Or maybe the whole day. Which is really saying something when you've been trained to believe that the world has been ending since 1988.

My point is, can we give the lifestyle bloggers a break? They are doing awesome work in this world and so what if their vintage-only-upcycled kitchen never REALLY looks like that except when they stage it that way for a blog post. Good for them. Good for them for being so EARNEST about seeking beauty.

I'm pretty sure the world doesn't need more cynicism. Or mess. Or ugliness.

But more pretty pictures? Yes, please.

When depression hits me like a black tidal wave, where do I go? To the pretty pictures. To the extra-optimistic-pretty-lifestyle blogs. To Pinterest.

I don't go to the REAL, AUTHENTIC, PAINFUL stories and pictures. Which is to say, I don't read people who write like me, har-har. And I certainly don't listen to the news.

I watch crochet videos on YouTube.

I follow the Instagram accounts of women who make hippie-jewelry and take pictures of flowers and give out balloons to random people just to be nice. I like to know those people exist. I like to see their daily outfits. I like to see their bowls of artfully arranged quinoa.

I like to know that somewhere, some awesome human being is organizing her blog's editorial calendar six months in advance. With pretty pictures and giveaways. THESE PEOPLE INSPIRE ME.

I don't CARE if this lifestyle blogger has a whole bevy of paid staff and virtual assistants who do her laundry and reply to her emails while she blogs about her Paleo-Attachment-Hobby-Farming-Vintage-Upcycling-Fashion Life and picks out a pretty, coordinating outfit.

Because the lifestyle blogger is giving me an incredible gift: she believes in BEAUTY. And she puts effort into it. Props to that, man. PROPS TO THAT.

Even if the pretty lifestyle blogger had to fake it 'til she made it, that gives me hope, too. I can fake it 'til I make it, too. 

Look. My Brian? It's no joke. There are days when I wake up and pain from my past has decided to show up and beat me down. My Brian is yelling at me so loud that all I want to do is scream. But I breathe in and I breathe out and then I pin a few pretty pictures on Pinterest.

My PTSD brain needs to know that beauty EXISTS SOMEWHERE in this world and if that means looking at staged pics of some Mommy Blogger's living room, well, thank God for her.

Thank you fake, pretty lifestyle blogs. Thank you for healing my Brian.