A "Good Role Model"

Hello Dearest Reader,

That is, if there is such a reader to be found in such a place as this withering blog in the year of our Lord, 2026.

Though, part of me has faith that there will be someone out there reading these words-- that I won't be writing into a void and there is indeed a kind soul stopping by the port of my mind, willing to lend a listening ear. And if that is you, which I suppose it is, I must extend an appreciative "thank you" for choosing to wander into this foreign and forgotten part of the Internet. Because what else could we call this place? A dormant corner of what was once my pride and joy, now foreign and forgotten even to the author.

This may be purple prose and perhaps a bit tedious, but I suppose I'm in a tedious state of mind. So if you don't mind indulging a tedious woman, I shall pontificate a bit further.

In an effort to face myself and this blog through a lens of self-awareness, I would like to acknowledge the self-inflicted drought I have extended across my blog and other platforms for nigh-on three years now. While "motherhood" or "living real life" may be convenient excuses as to why this is the case, and perhaps they are partially to blame, I must admit that it would be a stretch of the truth to assign full responsibility to such surface-level things.

And if on this New Year's day, I were to participate in radical honesty just between you and me, Dear Reader, I would tell you that I have come to the humbling conclusion that I stopped sharing "wisdom" online because somewhere along the way, I must have stopped believing that I have any "wisdom" to share at all.

So it has been that I find myself frozen at the keyboard, time and time again, writing and rewriting the things I wish to say, only to exit out of the tab and exile my work to the shame of the "drafts folder" over and over and over again. I feel frozen by the weight of sharing my thoughts; as if every word will be scrutinized and every mistake the source of another's visceral pain. I suppose it all felt so much easier back then, back when I was beginning this work online, as if the incredibly important things I wrote about were somehow lighter than I currently find them to be, now that I've grown older while the world has grown harder and my heart somehow softer.

Truthfully, when I reflect on my blog and personhood before motherhood, I often find myself wondering what business an early-twenties girl like myself had in sharing such thoughts at such a frequency and with such severe confidence as I once did.

I suppose I unfairly judge that girl a bit; the girl who began this blog.

I judge her and I miss her.

I miss her tenacity-- an admirable trait shared by many such naive young girls who charmingly believe that the good folks of the Internet absolutely and positively need to hear what they have to say, lest calamity and poor life decisions ensue.

I almost find it amusing now, the innocence that must be pumping through the veins of any girl aged twenty-four who believes she is wise enough to share advice and explain things to anyone. I used to such a girl, back when it all felt so simple and life was black and white. It was almost as if I had no care of offending or challenging-- so sure was I of the truth and the certainty that I must share it.

And I still believe those truths... I do.

But maybe I've become unsure if I'm the one who should be saying them.

Because who am I?

Really?

I find myself wondering now, if it is not better to have the confidence to be quiet than the confidence to speak on things you really know nothing of.

Because what do I know of life?

What can three decades teach a person?

Why do I place myself here, on this blog, ready to give you advice?

If I am again, radically honest with you Dear Reader, I must tell you that the earliest memory of feedback and the most consistent compliment I've received throughout my life has always been "Caitlin, you are a good role model."

I was told that by my parents and my teachers and my parent's friends and even my grandparents. In the trio of children I was babysat with, I was supposed to be the well-behaved one. I was always chosen to be the social leader, either formally by teachers or inadvertently by peers, because I was a "good role model." My most formative memories are being scolded for not setting a good example for my cousins and for being punished and rewarded based on my ability to achieve the status of a little girl that others should want to have as their own child.

I was not just to be a good child or a kind child or a sweet child.

I was to be the best child.

A child that all other parents would wish to have, to whom they would point and scold their children, that they should be like that good role model of a girl.

A foot out of line was not merely detrimental to my own soul and character: no. It would be detrimental to all those following my example as well-- siblings, friends, peers, and as I grew older, followers and readers.

I have felt this way ever since I had my first bus-buddy as a third grader, helping my little kindergartener onto the bus.

"All the little girls look up to you!"

"You're so pretty. My daughter wants to be like you."

"Caitlin, you're such a role model for young girls."

Again and again and again.

My entire life, I think I have felt the most lovable, most acceptable, and most appreciated when I was living out the life of a good role model.

I suppose I was groomed to be a good role model in the sense that it was my survival method of choice. While some children in dysfunctional families might lash out in chaos or rebellion, I think my cautious little Jesus-loving soul discovered quite quickly that only through being a good model could I earn maximum affection, approval, and applause. This was reinforced time and time again throughout my life until I think I lost parts of myself as I worked to ascend ever higher and grander, a role model to more and more people.

I suppose it was put upon me in the same way a class clown has been told since infancy "you are so funny" while the passive wife, once a small girl, is told "you are so good at putting others first." Thus, I believe I grew to protect myself by making myself valuable and useful to the world by becoming a "good role model." It brought me affection and approval from those whom I desired to please the most. It was a defense mechanism and an effective strategy to make my way in this world.

Because if I was not a good role model, what use was I?

Who would love me if I was not a good role model?

Would you even be reading this blog if I was not a good role model?

Probably not.

But it's important to tell you, Dearest Reader, that being a good role model never meant I felt as though I was perfect.

Far from it.

Even now, when I consider my well-concealed faults, I find a deep shame covering the sense of who I am as a person.

I feel innately ashamed of who I am beneath this carefully executed personhood I have learned to curate and perform since childhood. And perhaps that is the source of dysphoria I find lodged in myself, that who I am deep down is a horrid mess, and everything I try to do is just a cover for my own deficits; that outside the version of me that is a good role model, I am an uncontrollable loser who would have amounted to nothing if it were not for the foundational drive to achieve good role model status.

The truth is that within this good role model, there is pain and anguish and quite a bit of effort--- that choosing again and again to ascend to the person I knew everyone in my life wanted me to be was actually difficult and at times impossible. That sometimes I believe I have every right to turn around and be a horrific role model, if one really knew what my life was like growing up. And that I have sacrificed and killed off parts of myself in order to achieve what others would describe as a good role model.

Really, I think the hardest part about trying to be a good role model all my life is that I feel as though I've never had the freedom to make a wreck of myself. I've never had the freedom to learn my own lessons or make my own mistakes. I've always had to learn from the mistakes of others, lest I make a mistake myself and tarnish my reputation.

I've never thrown a knife.

But I know what it feels like to be stabbed.

And I think because of that, I became overly cautious and clung to this stupid idealized version of myself just to survive. I had to be restrained and constrained no matter how much trauma is thrown on me, lest I become a bad role model. And the pain in that is that I have had to bury so much pain when all I wanted to do was scream and lash out and make a mess of things... to really feel the freedom of life or the extent of my injuries.

But I never had the freedom to do that. Because even in my trauma I still focused on being a good role model, taking notes on how to endure so that someday I might share my battle strategies with those who would come after me.

But why is that?

Why is there a burden on my shoulders to be a good role model?

Why can I not simply live with the calling to love the Lord and what follows follows. Why must I pressure myself to be a role model for others or to share my decisions and life and mental state to such a degree that I feel surveilled even by my own conscious, policing myself and my thoughts not based on what pleases the Lord but on what achieves the status of good role model?

I don't know.

But I do know that I'm a procrastinator and a perfectionist.

And I think I'm prideful and maybe even a bit spoiled in life.

I simultaneously feel like a weakling and a warrior; as though any battles I've won are victorious by forfeit, as if the outcome was inevitable or merely the product of the passing of time; like I have no real contributions to any success in my life at all, like it was all inevitable or the product of playing things safe or merely doing the right thing over and over and over.

I think I've been this way my entire life.

And the truth is that an important part of my foundational story is that my choice to survive through being a good role model was not entirely random. It was my job in life to make my family look good. And I suppose I still make my family look good in some ways. I'm certainly not homeless or dealing with addiction or any major public problems. I'm healthy and married and keep a nice home and have beautiful children.

Isn't that just lovely?

I don't know.

Sometimes, I don't know how much of me is programming and how much of me is real. Because I was trained to be a good role model despite the instability of my family home. I think that's why I was most impressive and extra lovable. The home could be a bastion of chaos and drama, but I could face the world and never crack. No one would know what was really going on in our family.

Of course, that's not entirely true and I do recall a few mental and emotional breakdowns in class or amongst friends that probably seemed incredibly random and unexplained to the untrained eye.

And really, I think that has been the hardest part of building myself as a role model for everyone else: you can't be vulnerable.

You can't break.

Because if you break, who are we to look to? If I failed, what would happen to the people who looked up to me? If I lashed out or became "bad," what would that say about my family? What ugly truths would be uncovered? What pain would be discovered?

I think I never learned how to be vulnerable. It was too dangerous. And even in adulthood, I carried that torch, choosing to position myself as a "teacher." This "big sis blogger." But maybe it was just another way of keeping people at arms-length.

Because that's the sad truth about making yourself a "good role model" for others; I'm not a friend or a real person: I'm an archetype and a blueprint. 

And even if I make mistakes, they must only be discussed after they have been solved and made right. You don't come here to read about my faults and deficits right? You come here to find answers for your own life from some intangible wealth of knowledge I've somehow accumulated in my life.

But when we pause and ask, why does this young woman have so much wisdom?

I fear we uncover yet another dark truth.

Because when we stop and ask why that would be-- why any child would have wisdom beyond their years or why a young person so young might have a good sense of where to go in life, might it not reason that that same child may have experienced a good amount of pain and anguish to find such truths?

Would it not be believable that advice on happiness or joy or marriage or rebuilding after heartbreak would be fraught from horrid circumstances and self-hatred and dysfunction and brokenness? That perhaps I know how to find joy and dabble in femininity and creativity because I've fought depression and self-hatred and self-harm? Would you believe that perhaps I guard my marriage and love for my husband like a dragon because I've seen what a bitter wretched marriage can do to a family and an innocent child?

Could it be that I have the perspective on life that I do because I've dabbled in wickedness and attempted on my life and that maybe I have many people who hate me and many more who wish me ill? That maybe I carry scars and repressed memories and that some of my earliest memories are of feeling like a burden and a waste of space? That even now, I lay awake in the night, an insomniac filled with anxious fear of death and dying and failure?

Would you believe that I have ugliness to me in spades and I don't know why I ever came online to ever share anything good or noble or anything of the like.

That I wish I stayed anonymous and never portrayed these gigantic shoes I no longer seem to fill?

I know it may seem like an exaggeration, Dear Reader, to be speaking like this, but that's just it: this is part of me. I'm dramatic and a bit nihilistic and negative. I have huge rushes of emotion and can be quite immature and sensitive. And you don't know any of that about me because I purposely hid it.

I left out an entire side of myself.

All to be "a good role model."

And for so long, I believed it justifiable because I don't believe in oversharing or exposing oneself in a humiliating way online just for views and clicks.

But now that I reflect, especially in the safe haven that is this forgotten blog, I wonder if I've not reduced the importance of vulnerability and freedom in the name of elegance and self-protection.

I think I used to confuse pleasing the Lord with being a good role model. Because wouldn't pleasing the Lord equate being a good role model? Wouldn't being a Godly woman and a good wife and a beautiful woman automatically qualify you as a role model?

The more I think about it, the more I say, no.

Because we shouldn't be modeling our lives and personalities and decisions after other people.

It's not my job to model life for others.

Jesus is the ultimate role model.

No one needs me for that.

All I need to do is to serve the Lord and glorify him. I'm allowed to make mistakes and be human and have interests that don't align with other people's perception of me.

I think that's why I've particularly struggled with being an influencer compared to more actualized people. I was so highly sensitive to perceived criticism and disrespect because I was putting one hundred and ten percent of my effort into being that good "role model." And when it still wasn't enough to make people happy or impress them, what else could I give? What else could I do?

It just goes to show how much of my self worth and value and sense of identity was built on being a good role model. So much so that when people tell me I'm a bad role model or leading people astray, I felt as though I would vomit on the spot. It shook my entire sense of self! The whole reason I was here was to be a good example; what do you mean I'm not!?

But that is an important lesson I think I needed to learn in life, and being an "influencer" forced it in a way that being a normal person probably wouldn't. I think it was good for me to have people who hate me just for being me or for being Christian or traditional or whatever. Because nothing I was ever going to do was ever going to make them like me. It was impossible.

And I had to come to a place where I allowed people the liberty to not like me. And it was painful. And it began chipping away at the idea that I had to be a good role model.

Really, I'm not sure when the dismantling really began, but I do know that it all came crumbling down when I gave birth.

Becoming a mother in a most humiliating way, by having a traumatic messy horrific birth followed by an embarrassingly poorly spaced second pregnancy, not to mention all the breastfeeding failures and other deficits I faced... all of it revealed just how poor of a role model I would be for motherhood.

Especially in the homemaking and Christian realm of motherhood, I was the opposite of a role model. I chose an elective c-section. I formula fed. I shared the load with my husband 50/50. I chose to take time for myself while my kids were infants... I let other people cook for me and clean my house and do all sorts of things for me. I wasn't a hero or a birth warrior and I certainly wasn't an example of pain free birth or anything even remotely adjacent to Ina May Gaskin et al.

No.

I still remember how scared I was to share with you all just how bad it had really gone for me and how clearly I was NOT a role model for motherhood. It felt like inviting everyone to gather round and gaze upon the corpse of the woman I once was before birth, that good role model that was put up for other people to copy.

Really, I think when she gave birth, she died.

And something amazing happened after.

The good role model was slain, and in her place was birthed a real person.

All of a sudden, I felt set free from the pressure to be this perfect woman. Because I had already failed at role-modeling motherhood, one of the most important roles for a woman, so why keep up the facade anymore?

Gradually I started sharing more of my faults and true feelings, dressing how I actually wanted and spending my money and time how I like. I decorate now how I wanted to when I was a child and I eat and cook how I feel like, despite the crunchy followers pestering me. I indulge my hobbies and interests and beliefs and sassy side in a way I haven't in the past, breathing in the freedom while shedding the pressures I used to militantly obey.

And all the while, I've watched my subscribers unsubscribe and my followers unfollow. I've seen ever-increasing complaints on my photos that I'm no longer elegant or modest or feminine in my fashion. A few people hate my new house and even more think I travel too much and use too much makeup. I've seen comments accusing me of becoming feminist or that I have too much of an attitude or that I'm obnoxious or vapid or plastic looking.

And surprisingly, I think it's good for me.

I think I need to feel and learn what it is to disappoint the expectations of others. I think I needed to learn how to stand on my own two feet, appreciating and approving of myself without the approval of others or even despite the disapproval of others. I need to embody confidence in my identity in Christ and inherent value as a person just for being a person, and not because I fulfilled someone else's idea of me.

I think the criticism and complaints are good for me and something I wish I faced when I was younger. I wish I had learned how to disappoint people when I was younger. I wish I had shed the burden of being a "good role model" when I was young enough to discover myself outside of such a thing.

For so long it felt shocking and random that I would somehow find myself in this position online, but now that I have excavated the inner truths and foundational beliefs within myself, I see that there was truly no other place in life I would have ever ended up. I was groomed and designed to place myself here, shining a light on myself for others to follow as a beacon of proper living.

But is that the role model I want to be?

What if I don't want to be a role model at all?

What if I want to just be another person, like you or my neighbor or another friend?

What if I want to be real?

As I asked before in a different blog post, I must ask myself again, "if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it even fall?"

And if I live my life as a good role model, but no one is there to follow it, was I still a good role model? What is the purpose of living life as a model for others if I cannot feel authentic or free within the privacy of my own soul and heart?

Is a person supposed to live their life to be a good role model and nothing else?

Is that where my spiritual journey begins and ends? Is that what motivates morality or the pursuit of Christ or even the pursuit of family or joy or beauty or creativity?

I don't think so.

I think my pure and innocent desire to love Jesus and seek beauty as a child was somehow confused and perverted as I learned to survive in this world. I think my natural instincts and talents at reading people or choosing prudence and discernment were wrongfully twisted until I grew into nothing but a pressurized facade built up of a series of choices meant to please and appease others rather than myself.

And now I think that I must shed the idea of being a good role model once and for all.

Though, maybe I already have, but I just haven't told anyone yet.

Because with every bit of showing my true self, of bucking the expectations I know my followers and family and friends have for me, I release myself of the belief I've carried since I was five years old; that I must not live for myself, but must live to be a model for others. I have friends now, that know all the sides of myself. In the safety of my marriage, I've grown into a three dimensional human being able to take criticism and feel joy and be something more than a perfect wife. But this growth in my real life has made this role of online "teacher" feel unnatural and strange. I find myself hungry for other people to speak and give advice, not me. I feel eager to listen and to learn and to silence myself as I soak in the wisdom of those who are far more advanced than I am.

Maybe that's what I've been afraid to tell you all--- why I've refused to "publish" and why I've silenced myself.

I'm afraid to admit that I'm not here to make you happy anymore.

Because making everyone happy is not making me happy anymore.

I think I am done living for others and for that sense of identity that was implanted in me from such a young age.

I don't need to be a role model for otehrs.

I just need to be the person God made me to be.

Caitlin.

In conclusion, I want you to know that I'm not saying goodbye to this blog.

But I am saying goodbye to a version of myself I have kept for nearly my entire life--- that version of me that lived to perform for others. That version that made every single decision based on a calibrated equation meant to appease and impress others.

I choose freedom.

And freedom is an element of femininity I have only recently recognized. I suppose I never acknowledged i t in the past because I have been so disconnected from my own freedom. But motherhood, especially the rocky start to motherhood, has given me a type of freedom I didn't know I was yearning for.

And in this build up and arc of growing to become successful and now falling down from that success toward mediocrity or the death of a blog or channel or whatever, that is the true arc I have needed in order to find spiritual and psychological wholeness. Because finding success and accolades in ever increasing numbers would only fuel the reward feedback loop I had in that being perfect would give me affection and approval. I don't think I could ever find true psychological freedom by continually ascending wiht thunderous applause of an online audience.

No.

I needed to face my own failures and deficits with the online disapproval and disgust of others I perhaps would never have faced in real life to find the freedom I didn't realize I was yearning for.

The great humbling of growing as an influencer only to shrink and die off--- this is unfortunately the path I think I needed the most. I needed to be humbled in order to finally release the belief that I could be a perfect person. Now I'm ready to explore other things and other parts of my personality. I'm ready to try new hobbies and new adventures. I want to grow old and allow myself to age. I want to evolve as a person and shift and break the boundaries I've kept in my head. I want to release the expectations I've put on my inner child all my life.

A funny thing happened this summer that made me realize how much I've changed.

It's small, but poignant.

I opened up in my vlogs about how I was uncertain about my eyebrow shape and coloring, only to be met with a flood of strong opinions about which eyebrows would best suit my face and all the ways I could improve or tweak myself to flatter my features better. Of course, much of the advice was conflicting, but the main sentiment was that there was major room for improvement.

And the crazy thing was that the comments didn't bother me at all.

In fact, I felt receptive to such helpful advice! I was pleased that people cared to help me improve, and I felt appreciative that they were watching my videos at all. Gone was the girl who would have reacted in severe anguish over not being "perfect." Gone was the girl who would be hurt at the criticism or overly sensitive to well-meaning advice.

And in her place was a person whom I'm very pleased to be.

A real person. With room for much improvement.

While I have been silent on this blog, I'm happy to tell you that I have done much inner work over these past three years. So much so that now I have fully accepted myself as I am, flaws and all. I am content in the fact that others can see my flaws as well.

I don't believe my value only comes from being a perfect woman or perfect wife or perfect beauty. I'm imperfect in all those areas, and I'm happy for people to know that. It's a fuller understanding of who I am, but it is also freeing. There is freedom in releasing myself from the pressure to be better than everyone--- to be the blueprint.

I'm happy to tell you all that this is no longer a blueprint blog.

It's just a regular old blog from a regular old girl.

And I hope you stick around to see it.

Love,

Cait