Many months ago, I wrote that “my migraine’s marshmallow snowman” was the strangest heading I could imagine writing for a blog post… well, hold my non-alcoholic lite beer (ginger ale), because life just took a massive turn for the weirder…
I didn’t know this, but my phone apparently collates photos into albums. Honestly, having no idea what was going on, I opened my photos last night to look for an image I needed and discovered this:
Memories?!?! I haven’t a single memory of ever being a crippled pirate mother?!?! Let alone “over the years”!?!?
That said, the photo is me… I’m a mother too… and I’ll even take the misspelt title of ‘cripled’ onboard given that I am often disabled with chronic migraine… but, WT@F has a pirate got to do with anything?
I scrolled through the self-generated album, and it had obviously just pulled a vast array of selfies of me into one album… but there in the middle was one of my daughter and I in ‘dress-up’ at the beach, and I suppose with my fake-pirate-hook I could be a crippled-pirate-mother:
Mystery solved… I guess. I scrolled through all the other “normal” selfies of me and wondered why use this one as the inspiration? The other photos were all ok, some I looked tired, others I looked squinty but happy – certainly none were as wind-blown as the crippled-pirate-mother version of me, but there were plenty of other smiles to choose from…
It got me thinking.
One photo is not really enough to define a person.
If it’s recognizable as you, then I suppose it could be an indicative image of who you are.
But a single photo is by definition two-dimensional… it’s flat. Keep flicking through photos and you’ll start to see a more rounded version of a person. Moods will appear, postures will change, side-eye will ensue…
Humans are complicated creatures.
Yes, ok, I am a crippled pirate mother, but I am so much more.
Be careful not to buy into a short-hand version of yourself.
AND – don’t let the labels other people apply to you stick (unless YOU think they suit you).
I am a mother, but I am also a daughter, wife, sister, friend. I blog and I read. I am an architect and a student. I am an introvert, but I enjoy a good conversation. I drink coffee every morning but tea in the afternoon. I am reliably-unreliable but fiercely loyal. I often suffer from low self-esteem and yet I possess a steely resolve when I think I’m right. I’m kind by nature, but I might cripple-pirate-mother-your-@$$ if you double cross me or mine!!
I am migraine-me, but I am more.
Remember – other people shouldn’t get to summarize you into one thing.
Thank you pre-made photo-album, I appreciate your best intentions, but YOU don’t get to define ME.
Take care taking care out there, and keep smiling, Linda x
PS – the spelling mistake in the title had me on edge the whole time I was writing this post – something seemed fishy – so just before I hit the “publish” button, I asked my eldest daughter “how do these album things work?” She replied that someone has to open the phone photos, select a person’s face, assign it a name, and then the phone will seek out all the shots of that face. In other words, I wasn’t randomly assigned “criple-pirate-mother”… someone who had access to my phone graced me with that name… thank you youngest daughter (the one in the beach photo)… no matter how much you swear it wasn’t you… you inherited my poor spelling… so you’re busted…
PPS – technological ignorance aside, I stand by the rest of this blog post – you are more than the label that others assign to you (cheekily-sneakily or otherwise)!
PPPS – I was reluctant to post this today, because I’m not a fan of how I look in photos in general, but these ones in particular are not great… but I did, because I remembered a Ted Talk I watched a while back called “5 reasons you look bad in photos” – and all 5 reasons confirm that the issue is with how you SEE the photos, not how you actually LOOK. It reiterates that a single image represents a micro-second of your life, and your life is more than a mere second. If you only have time to watch a couple of minutes of the 13-minute talk, scroll to minute 10.15 and watch the last couple of minutes…
The Mindful Migraine 
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