From Instagram-Perfect to Perfectly Messy: Why I Stopped Pretending to Have My Sh*t Together

There's something hilariously ironic about sitting down to write this while wearing three-day-old sweatpants and drinking coffee from a mug that definitely needs washing. Four years ago, I wouldn't have dared admit that. Hell, four years ago, I would've staged this whole scene – fresh pressed outfit, aesthetic coffee cup, and probably some carefully arranged crystals in the background for good measure.

But here's the thing about pretending to have your life together: it's exhausting. And spoiler alert? Nobody actually buys it anyway.

When I wrote my first book at 23, I thought I had life figured out. I had my trauma neatly packaged into chapters, my healing journey perfectly articulated, and my wisdom wrapped up in a bow. I was the poster child for "look how well I'm doing despite everything." And honestly? I believed my own hype.

Then life did what life does best – it laughed at my plans.

Between watching my parents navigate the prison system and trying to rebuild those relationships, facing my own patterns in relationships, and realizing that healing isn't a straight line but more like a drunk person trying to walk home at 2 AM, something shifted. I started to see how much energy I was spending on maintaining this image of having it all together.

The breaking point? It wasn't some dramatic moment. It was more like death by a thousand paper cuts of exhaustion. It was the constant gap between my carefully curated social media presence and the reality of crying in my car between meetings. It was the disconnect between the "wisdom" I was sharing and the mess I felt inside. It was the realization that in trying to appear healed, I was actually stopping myself from healing.

Here's what nobody tells you about growth: it's ugly. Like, really ugly. It's sitting with yourself at 3 AM wondering why you keep making the same mistakes. It's realizing that your "boundaries" might actually be walls. It's understanding that sometimes the person you've been portraying to the world has become your own prison.

So I stopped. I stopped trying to make my life look Instagram-perfect. I stopped pretending that shadow work was all sage bundles and meaningful journal entries. I started telling the truth – not just to others, but to myself.

And you know what's funny? The moment I started being real about my mess, something magical happened. People started being real with me too. Suddenly, conversations went from surface-level "living my best life" bullshit to actual, meaningful connections about struggle, growth, and the beautiful disaster that is being human.

These days, my life isn't more together – it's just more honest. My healing isn't more complete – it's just more authentic. And my wisdom? Well, it mostly consists of knowing that I don't know much at all, and that's perfectly okay.

Because here's what I know now at 27 that I didn't know at 23: The real magic isn't in having your shit together. It's in being okay with the fact that sometimes (or often) you don't. It's in finding humor in the chaos, connection in the vulnerability, and growth in the discomfort.

So here I am, writing to you in my questionably clean sweatpants, with my unwashed coffee mug, telling you that it's okay if your life is a mess right now. It's okay if you're not where you thought you'd be. It's okay if your healing journey looks more like a game of Twister than a straight path to enlightenment.

Because maybe, just maybe, the real glow-up isn't about getting it all together. Maybe it's about finally being brave enough to be seen in all your perfectly imperfect glory.

And trust me, that's way more interesting than any Instagram-perfect life could ever be.