What do you wish people would stop romanticizing, because you’ve lived the reality of it?

[HazelMaker]

The 1990s

Marrying men

Therapy

Promotions at work.

SAHM, it's not really a choice if you've been forced to do it because your child is so disabled there's no appropriate childcare available and they spend enormous amounts of time in hospital every year.

Winter

Lucky you. I love my children and think they've turned out well, but that's not always the case. The trouble is that everybody advertises motherhood as wonderful when that's not guaranteed.

Caring for a disabled child.

Do people romanticise that?

Growing vegetables in high enough quantities as to be self sufficient.

Getting DLA for your child.

Eating out. Nearly always shit.

Vanlife
Internships /work experience

Unpaid unstable working living part time in a van in order to 'prove' my commitment to a subject I'd already spent years studying.

Or growing your own at all. I have a black thumb!

A lot of these are things that those people have presumably lived through themselves as well and have enjoyed it though, even if you personally didn't. That’s not really romanticising.

Extended families = meet ups with people you'd rather not know

Not romanticising as such, but living a life that revolves around alcohol and being quite scornful of people that don't drink. I've lived with an alcoholic (now dead) and the reality was grim.

Being part of a girly group.

Living rurally.

To be fair I don't think people romanticise thar?

I agree totally. I remember being a teenager and smothering myself in vaseline before bed to stay warm.

Grief. It doesn't get easier. It's a constant dull ache that can erupt like a bloody volcano

Tell me more?

Romance!

Particularly engagement rings, the very idea that women get giddy about engagement rings and proposals makes me quite annoyed.

Agree. BORING!!!

Lockdown. And we must firmly resist and defy any attempt by the government to say “it wasn’t that bad” when they want to use it again.

Hugely.

You know all the grot you read online where Autism is referred to as a superpower, people with Downs Syndrome are referred to as some homogeneous group of endlessly happy individuals, mothers pushing wheelchairs are told that only the strongest people are given the hardest tasks?

It translates into real life too.