#122: Performing.
Pretending and performing go hand in hand.
We live in a society that prides itself on performance—where every metric, from the jobs that we hold, to the titles we wear, to the money we make, to the social media likes we receive, becomes a scoreboard for our own self-worth. We are taught, often quietly and relentlessly, to measure ourselves by what we do, produce, and achieve.
Performance and pretending often go hand in hand—we fake enjoyment in jobs we’ve outgrown out of fear, or cling to roles that no longer fit because change feels like failure, and perform “success” because we are afraid to admit misalignment.
And in the digital age, the pressure to do more, show more, and share more has only intensified. A constant push to prove ourselves can easily become a performance trap, where we pretend rather than reflect, trading contentment for content, authenticity for approval, and fulfillment for validation.
The Performance Trap
This dynamic explodes online, where women curate their lives for likes. Sara Petersen wrote, Instagram turns “the private work of mothering is turned into a public performance, generating billions of dollars. The message is simple: we’re all just a couple of clicks away from a better, more beautiful experience of motherhood.”
Polished feeds demand constant “on” energy, blurring family time with content creation. This obsession turns motherhood into a highlight reel and life into a nonstop hustle, leaving ambitious moms exhausted from chasing external validation.
I recently stumbled upon a Substack titled “Why all the girl bosses suddenly want chickens” and to be honest I cannot one sentence out of my mind: They didn’t stop earning. They stopped performing. I happen to think that “chicken tending” can be every bit as unattainable as “girl bossing.” Posting carefully curated pictures of chickens in an effort to keep one’s brand spinning is still deeply performative. Just because the content shifts doesn’t mean the effect isn’t damaging. A softer image doesn’t reduce the pressure; it repackages the same expectations in a more palatable, aspirational, and quietly harder‑to-question form.
If we’re going to have honest conversations about work, visibility, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like ours, we also have to acknowledge the impact of glorified images on the people watching from the outside. At what point does inspiration become illusion? When does a personal story stop liberating others and start trapping them in a comparison loop? Does feeding others an incomplete picture of our lives online create more damage than good?
As someone who participated in that attention-seeking economy in my early years of entrepreneurship, I have experienced this performance trap first hand. I spent years chasing the next like, the next milestone, the next form of external validation, believing that if I could just keep up, I would finally feel like enough—or my brand would grow big enough. Instead, showing up online quietly shaped not just how I saw myself, but also shaped how I saw other women, turning their curated feeds into measuring sticks for my own life.
Breaking the Script
I know the tension that exists when we hold on to something we have outgrown and the push/pull of letting go of identities that no longer fit. Many of us tie our sense of self to our careers and working identities, making it hard to pause, pivot, or admit a path no longer fits. We opt to hold on when we really want to let go, we struggle to ‘do it all’ when we quietly wish we could be doing less.
Post-kids, this becomes especially visible in the constant, loaded question: “What do you do?” For many mothers, that question is not just about work. It is about belonging, comparison, and where we place ourselves in the invisible hierarchy of motherhood. In our effort to understand each other, determine whether we are on the same path, or make sense of the demands of work and motherhood, we often end up ‘othering’ one another, choosing sides and pitting ‘working moms’ against ‘stay-at-home’ ones.
I have lived on both sides of that divide. I have raised babies while climbing the corporate ladder, stayed home with toddlers while quietly searching for myself, built a business with young kids in tow, and now I rest somewhere solidly in-between—working while my kids are in school and mothering when they are home, all the while helping other women navigate much of the same.
As someone who has mothered every which way, I have felt the silent divide between “working” and “staying home” in deeply personal ways. For years, I moved through the messy middle of those two identities, often feeling torn between them.
And what I have learned is this: the more secure we feel in our own path, the less likely we are to compare ourselves to others. The more content we are in our own lives, the less likely we are to be captivated by someone else’s glorified content on the internet. The more grounded we are in our own choices, the less threatened we feel by what someone else chooses.
Because the truth is, if someone or something is triggering us, they are often offering clues—illuminating a path we wish we were on, or exposing a part of ourselves we haven’t yet had the courage to face. The women who trigger us are rarely the problem. More often, they are mirrors, reflecting a longing, a version of ourselves, or a life we’re afraid to pursue.
The real flex? Building a path—messy, true, sustainable—that lets you mother fiercely while honoring who you are beyond the scorecard. What performance myth will you release today? How will you show up more authentically, not for others, but for yourself?
Read more: To affect or change how someone or something develops, behaves, or thinks. Read more
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