For Easter, I sewed my daughter a dress. I did at the last minute because I’d been so busy, and I didn’t finish it until Sunday morning. I was super anxious to try it on her, because there had been no fittings. It was either going to work or else we needed to go into her closet to find something else. Welp, she refused to try it on and I barely got it on her as she threw a toddler tantrum. It worked, but the tantrum shook me. Welp, the last time this happened (Christmas), I posted it on Threads. I got so much encouragement, so I posted this one as well. And then I moved on, because there was too much to do.

I opened up my phone again after church with my little girl happily in her dress as we made our way home. The Thread was two hundred comments deep at that point. Two hundred comments. What felt like all of Threads was calling me a terrible mom. Some were telling me I needed to do store bought clothes for my kiddo. And there was a whole lot of other stuff that was absolutely vile to read. I read every word of it, because I couldn’t believe it.

I went back to the original Threads post and couldn’t find anything that truly would have inspired this kind of reaction, except that the post assumed people had followed me for the Christmas dress journey. That pretty much confirmed that this wasn’t about me.

So I leaned in on my years of social media training and corrected the misinformation. I started answering questions and quickly realized that I was answering the same questions over and over again. That didn’t seem efficient, especially on a holiday. So I added comments to the original thread covering those questions and then went back to reply to a few more before I had to get offline again.

When I hopped back on, the tide had turned. The moms had come out and saw through to exactly what had happened with my daughter. They were in the comments defending me. They were reposting it, saying that it was the wildest comment section they had ever read. So I decided it was time to wash my hands of it. I posted a picture of my happy child in her dress and said I had to move on with my life. And the moms agreed with me. So they stayed to counteract what happened, and I moved on.

What did I learn?

Oh I learned so much. The first is to remember that each post needs to be written as a standalone. You can’t reference something that happened four months ago and expect someone who is finding you for the first time to understand it. Business-wise, I’ve always understood that, but it’s time I bring that understanding to my personal posting as well.

I also learned that I can’t rely on social media to give me emotional fulfillment. Posting about sewing and my daughter’s toddler-ness had given me emotional fulfillment once. So I chased after that again. But social media is going to give me what it wants to give me. I asked for something it wasn’t prepared to give me and because of that, I got the exact opposite reaction. If I had taken into account the online environment and the fact that it was a holiday, I would have been able to predict that. But I didn’t, so I got what I got.

And my mental health is in a much better place than I think. I’ve experienced this kind of pile on before. If you’re a woman on social media with opinions, it’s bound to happen. I let it take me down before. This time, I legit just moved on with my day. We had a wonderful Easter, and if I hadn’t mentioned to my partner about how shocked I had been about the response to a post, I don’t think he would have even known something happened. It had all just rolled off my back that easily.

What’s next on Threads?

When this has happened in the past, my initial instinct was to not post ever again. This time, I posted again that same day. It was a little story about my daughter’s first dentist appointment. It didn’t get near the attention, but it broke the seal. And I never had that moment where I felt like I should run away from social. So yes, I’m going to continue to post. This won’t affect the frequency either. I was an infrequent poster on Threads, and I’ll continue to be an infrequent poster on Threads.

I’m going to continue to put in the same kind of effort I have been into my mental health. Something is really working now. I’m able to ride the bumps better than I ever have.

And overall, life will just continue to go on. Like I said, I’m a woman with an opinion who likes to post to social media. I’ll prepare for the ramifications of that and hope that it doesn’t happen. But mostly, I’ll just keep enjoying my life. And honestly, I think that’s what prepared me so well for this time around. I love my family, my friends, my neighborhood and my life. People attacking me online? Not all that important when I have all of that.

Have you been attacked online? What did you learn from it?