\u201cMEGAN for PRESIDENT,\u201d yelled Business Chicks on Insta. MAFS relationship expert Mel Schilling now has 124,000 likes after pairing it with I Am Woman: \u201cThis is what reclaiming the narrative looks like. Megan Byron didn\u2019t just respond, she led.\u201d<\/p>\n
Except Megan didn\u2019t. She\u2019s said nothing publicly at all. But by the time people worked out Megan didn\u2019t write the statement, it had been turned into a blueprint for what strength looks like.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the bit I keep circling back to.<\/p>\n
I live in real life, not on the Jumbotron. I\u2019ve known men and women who\u2019ve been betrayed. Along with being a love rat myself, I\u2019ve woken, forever ago, to a boyfriend using his bedroom voice on the phone to someone else.<\/p>\n
So I know what those early days feel like. You\u2019re numb. Embarrassed. Furious. You think about crashing the car into a wall for dramatic effect, stop eating because you can control that.<\/p>\n
So it must suck to go through that horror while the internet is posting made up hard ass speeches celebrating a version of strength which is that anyone who grieves and doesn\u2019t walk away without flinching is weak.<\/p>\n
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It makes people like us, with mortgages and kids and shared passwords and dreams of a shared future, the ones who ponder at 3am what \u201cfor better, for worse\u201d really means, feel like anything less is weakness.<\/p>\n
If you want time or maybe even to stay, you\u2019re not \u201creclaiming\u201d anything or being \u2013 I shudder at this pointless word \u2013 \u201cempowered\u201d.<\/p>\n
But what if the real Megan doesn\u2019t want to be anyone\u2019s president? What if she decides to stay and work through things, like Dave Grohl\u2019s wife Jordyn did when he had a baby outside their marriage? What if she doesn\u2019t want to ascend in soft hand coverings?<\/p>\n
She deserves the right to do that. Or not. But most of all, to not have things she didn\u2019t write become her story.<\/p>\n
As one Schilling follower said of the fake statement, \u201cThink how hurtful it would be for a woman to have words attributed to her \u2026 about a deeply personal situation, where the continual reposting of those words creates even more expectation of and pressure on her to react in a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jinkies, couldn\u2019t have put it better.<\/p>\n
People in busted relationships need time to work out if something new can be built from the wreckage. To sit in the shower, crying until they feel desiccated. To call their sister: \u201cI have no idea what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t need uninformed randoms calling them queen. They need friends who won\u2019t judge if they get back together or key his car. Maybe both.<\/p>\n
Kate Halfpenny is founder of Bad Mother Media. Her new book, Boogie Wonderland, is out now. Subscribers can buy a copy from Booktopia<\/a> for the discounted price of $24.26 plus postage with the code WONDERLAND10. This offer is available until August 31.<\/p>\n