> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.inthegraywithkirsten.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Price of Performing: When the Life We Showcase Isn't the Life We're Actually Living - URL: https://www.inthegraywithkirsten.com/the-price-of-performing/ - Published: 2026-09-21T13:07:42.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-21T13:07:42.000Z - Author: Kirsten Soldridge There are Facebook memories that make me smile when they appear. Pictures of my children when they were little. Ordinary afternoons I had forgotten. Vacations, birthdays, silly moments with my husband. Tiny pieces of a life I am grateful were captured. And then there are memories that make me uncomfortable. Not because the pictures themselves are bad. Because I remember what was happening outside the frame. Years ago, my family and I moved to North Carolina during a season when I was building a successful business. In the beginning, things were good. My business was doing well. I had achieved a level of success I had once only dreamed about, and from the outside, my life probably looked pretty incredible. Eventually, things began to change. My business started struggling. Our finances started struggling. There were months when our bills were higher than our income, and behind the beautiful pictures and posts about success was a woman becoming increasingly afraid of what was happening. But I kept posting. I kept sharing the success. I kept presenting a version of my life that made it seem like everything was okay. And every time I hit share, there was a part of me that felt like a fraud. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why. The easiest explanation would be that I wanted other people to believe my life was better than it actually was. And that's true. But it wasn't the whole truth. **I was also desperately trying to convince myself.** Maybe if everyone else believed I was still successful, I could believe it too. Maybe if nobody knew we were struggling, I wouldn't have to fully acknowledge how scared I was. Maybe if I could keep the picture intact, somehow everything behind it would eventually catch up. But underneath all of that was something even harder for me to admit. I didn't believe I was enough without the success. For years, people had questioned my dreams. I had been told I was foolish. That I wasn't going to make it. That the things I wanted were unrealistic. And then I did make it. For a while, success became evidence. *See?* *I wasn't foolish.* *I was capable.* *I proved them wrong.* I built so much of my identity around what I had accomplished that when those accomplishments began slipping away, it didn't simply feel like my business was struggling. It felt like **I was failing.** And if everyone discovered what was really happening, maybe they would realize I wasn't the person they thought I was. Maybe they wouldn't respect me. Maybe they wouldn't trust me as a leader. Maybe they wouldn't want to work with me or buy from me. And perhaps most painfully: Maybe everyone who had doubted me had been right all along. I want to be careful when I talk about where beliefs like these originated. Looking backward at our childhoods, relationships and experiences doesn't mean blaming other people for every choice we eventually make as adults. My choices were mine. But healing has required me to become curious about where some of my beliefs came from. And somewhere along the way, I had learned to connect my worth to what I could accomplish. So when the accomplishments began disappearing, I didn't know how to separate what was happening in my life from who I was as a person. And I performed harder. --- **The Cost of Keeping Up the Picture** Performance requires an incredible amount of energy. I know because I've lived it. When people praised the things I posted, sometimes their validation actually made me feel worse. They would congratulate me. Tell me how successful I was. Tell me they wanted what I had. And instead of allowing myself to receive those words, I would feel the disconnect between the woman they were seeing and the woman actually living the life. I felt like an imposter. So I kept trying harder to maintain the image. It became a vicious cycle. I couldn't ask for help because asking for help would require admitting something was wrong. I couldn't admit my business was failing. I couldn't openly acknowledge that our bills had become greater than our income. And eventually, the energy I was spending trying to make my life **look good** was taking energy away from making my life **feel good.** It affected my mental health. It affected my marriage. It affected my relationship with my children. I became so consumed with painting a beautiful picture of my life that, in many ways, **I was neglecting the actual life happening behind it.** That's difficult for me to admit. But it's true. And maybe that's why I have so much compassion now when I think about how easy it is to fall into this trap. I don't think most people wake up in the morning and decide to create a fake life on the internet. Sometimes we're just hurting. Sometimes we're ashamed. Sometimes we're terrified of what people will think. And sometimes we're trying so desperately to convince everyone else that we're okay because we're hoping their belief will somehow help us believe it too. --- **Privacy Is Not the Same as Performance** I also don't believe authenticity requires us to tell the internet everything. There are parts of my life you will never see. There are struggles I keep private. There are conversations that belong only to my husband and me. There are things my children share with me that aren't mine to turn into content. There are difficult days when I may still post a beautiful photograph because something beautiful genuinely happened inside that difficult day. **Privacy and performance are not the same thing.** Privacy says: *This belongs to me.* Performance says: *I need you to believe something about my life that I don't currently believe myself.* Maybe authenticity isn't about showing everyone everything. Maybe it's simply about no longer feeling the need to intentionally manufacture a perception. And that requires us to examine something nobody else can examine for us: **our intention.** Why am I sharing this? What am I hoping this post proves? Would I still value this moment if nobody else ever saw it? Am I sharing something beautiful because it genuinely brought me joy? Or am I hoping that if enough people tell me my life looks beautiful, I'll finally believe that it is? Those aren't questions anyone outside of us can answer. We have to be willing to answer them ourselves. --- **Healing Isn't Nearly as Photogenic as We Make It Look** I think we've created a beautiful aesthetic around healing. Bubble baths. Journals. Candles. Meditation. Walks through nature. Inspirational quotes about protecting our peace. And I genuinely love many of those things. But real healing isn't nearly as photogenic as social media sometimes makes it appear. Sometimes healing is sobbing on the bathroom floor because you've finally admitted that the choices you've been making aren't going to create the life you want. Sometimes it's recognizing a trigger as it's happening and intentionally choosing a different response. Sometimes it's apologizing. Sometimes it's admitting you were wrong. Sometimes it's looking at your own behavior and realizing you don't particularly like what you're seeing. Sometimes it's setting a boundary nobody applauds. Sometimes it's changing your mind. Sometimes it's walking away from something you once proudly told everyone you wanted. Sometimes it's making one tiny healthier decision over and over and over again while absolutely nobody notices. Most healing happens when there isn't an audience. Which raises an uncomfortable question: **Are we more interested in being perceived as healed, or in actually becoming healthier?** And perhaps an even harder one: **Can you tolerate looking imperfect while becoming healthier?** I couldn't for a very long time. I couldn't stand the thought of people seeing me as anything other than the version of myself I was trying so desperately to convince them I was. Today, I would rather make the choice I know brings me closer to peace—even if I don't look particularly good while making it. Because sometimes becoming healthier requires admitting something we'd rather hide. Sometimes it requires acknowledging our contribution to a problem. Sometimes it requires allowing someone else to misunderstand us. Sometimes it requires starting again. And sometimes it means accepting that we can be good people who have still made unhealthy choices. That isn't failure. That's being human. --- **A Life That Feels Good Doesn't Always Feel Good** This might be one of the biggest things I've learned. When I say that I've created a life that feels peaceful, I am not saying that I wake up every morning floating through my house in a permanent state of gratitude. I still experience stress. I still get exhausted. There are months when money is tighter than others. I experience grief. I get angry. I get frustrated. I still have triggers. There are still relationships and situations that hurt. **A life that feels good isn't a life that always feels good.** Peace isn't the absence of difficult emotions or difficult circumstances. For me, peace has become knowing that those things no longer define me. It's knowing that I can have a difficult day without believing I have a terrible life. It's my children walking into my bedroom and plopping onto my bed because they know they can talk to me. It's conversations with my husband about where we've been, everything we've survived, where we are now and where we still hope to go. It's dancing together in the kitchen. It's walking quietly through the woods in the morning. It's noticing a spiderweb covered in dew or a dragonfly hiding in the grass. It's sitting down to write because I genuinely love the way I feel when I put words onto a page. And maybe most importantly, it's knowing that I love who I am enough that someone else not liking me no longer requires me to change myself. For most of my life, I cared deeply about what other people thought. So deeply that I can see now that there were times I was living versions of a life other people would approve of instead of asking whether it was actually the life **I wanted.** Letting go of that has been one of the most freeing experiences of my life. --- **Who Are You Building Your Life For?** Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if social media had disappeared during that season in North Carolina. If there had been no audience. No posts to make. No success to display. No one watching. Would I have made different choices? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know who I would have been without an audience back then because so much of my identity was wrapped up in how I was being perceived. But I know what my answer would be today. Take Facebook away. Take Instagram away. Take every social media platform away. Nobody sees the office I'm building. Nobody reads about the quiet mornings. Nobody sees the pictures I take. Nobody knows my husband and I danced in the kitchen. Nobody knows my children came into my room and talked with me for an hour. Nobody applauds my growth. Nobody compliments my writing. Nobody tells me how peaceful my life looks. **I would still choose it.** I would still write. I would still walk. I would still take pictures of tiny beautiful things most people pass without noticing. I would still dance in the kitchen with my husband. I would still have long conversations with my children. I would still choose a slower, quieter life. Because I'm no longer creating my life for the people watching it. I'm creating it for the person who actually has to live it. Me. So maybe that's the question worth sitting with: **Are you building your life for the people watching it or for the person who actually has to live it?** Because you don't have to keep performing. You don't have to convince everyone you're happy. You don't have to prove you're healed. You don't have to make your marriage, family, career, home, finances, or life look a certain way. You are allowed to take all of that energy and turn it inward. It probably won't photograph as beautifully at first. It might actually get messier. You may have to acknowledge things you've been avoiding. You may have to meet versions of yourself you'd rather not look at. You may have to tolerate looking imperfect while you become healthier. But with every intentional choice you make, something changes. You stop needing everyone else to believe your life is beautiful. Because **you finally know how it feels to live inside it.** And little by little, instead of creating a life that photographs beautifully, **you can create one that feels beautiful to live.**