Dismiss the Dis
The Oprah Magazine|May 2017

When criticism is offered not to be constructive but to shut you down, file it under Junk.

Glennon Doyle Melton
Dismiss the Dis

SEVERAL YEARS BACK, soon after I started blogging, I came to a painful realization: The price you pay for having opinions and airing them is, in a word, critics. I’d been blissfully unaware of this until I made the mistake of typing my name into the Google search bar. If there is one piece of wisdom I can offer, let it be this: Don’t Google yourself.

It was like going down a toxic rabbit hole of vicious comments. I was too flighty, too crazy, too ugly, too fill-in-the-blank. The attacks were ultra personal, and they hurt. Layered on top of the pain was shame—I’m a grown woman and a feminist, for God’s sake. I’d vowed to be vocal and vulnerable whatever the consequences, and that meant I shouldn’t care what people thought. But I did. After reading them all, I wanted to take back everything I’d ever revealed and retreat with my family into a Wi-Fi-free rainforest, where the only venom directed at me would be from reptiles. Since that wasn’t possible, I climbed into bed and didn’t emerge for 24 hours.

The next day, I willed myself to get up and called my sister. “I’ve ruined my life and my kids’ lives,” I cried. “I should never have put us out there to be eaten alive. What was I thinking?”

This story is from the May 2017 edition of The Oprah Magazine.

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This story is from the May 2017 edition of The Oprah Magazine.

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