The Authenticity Project

by Clare Pooley

She kept scrolling, despite knowing this would not be a comfort, more a form of mild self-harm.

Baby scans. What was the point in sharing those? They all looked the same, and none of them resembled an actual child, more like a weather map predicting an area of high pressure over northern Spain.

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,” she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. “It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,” she’d say as she brushed her hair.

Surely it would be better to live a messy, flawed, sometimes not very pretty life that was real and honest, than to constantly try to live up to a life of perfection that was actually a sham?