We need to stop sharing the "choose your hard" memes

Why this meme hurts more than it helps

I’m someone who recently went through a divorce, and I saw that meme—both before, during, and after the end of my marriage. I’m going to be really honest: I think people who share those memes do so out of their own experience of hard, without understanding of what someone else’s hard looks like. People want you to choose your hard, but what they don’t understand is that sometimes “hard” isn’t a choice—and every person is doing the best they can with what they have.

What You Don’t See Behind Someone’s Divorce

Today, a friend posted a version of one of those “choose-your-hard” memes where she said that marriages take work, that you just have to choose to work on the marriage and that walking away from a marriage was an incredibly selfish thing to do.

And, you know—I sat with it. But you know what I realized? When you look at a person who is divorcing or divorced, you don’t know what they’re going through. You don’t know all the steps that they took to save their marriage. In my case, it was years of therapy, years of self-work, years of trying to make my marriage work, and years of abandoning myself in favor of trying to be the person that my partner needed me to be—someone clearly completely out of alignment with who I am.

Choosing Myself Was Called Selfish

During my divorce, I was accused of being selfish. And in some ways, they’re right. I was being selfish. But it was also the first time that I was choosing myself. I was choosing not to abandon myself. I was choosing to heal all of those parts of me that I had stuffed down and not allowed to speak for years and years. Honestly? I shouldn’t have had to give up those things to begin with.

Healing Isn’t Linear—Or Easy

As I went through the healing process, discovering that I have CPTSD, as well as autism and ADHD taught me that I can’t simply take a pill and magically be better. Oftentimes, the symptoms of those things overlap, and so it’s hard to unravel and find ways to move forward in life. For the past few years, I have been working with coaches and therapists and trying a million different therapy modalities to help ease the suffering I was going through—to help deal with the severe mental anguish that was manifesting itself in physical symptoms.

Yes, it was hard. And yes, I chose that hard. I chose to heal. Choosing to heal is one of the hardest choices a person can make. But that healing process isn't linear. That healing process doesn’t happen overnight. And, guess what? Sometimes, part of that healing means leaving a marriage that is no longer sustainable.

I was recently bemoaning the fact that for the past couple of years, as I have been seeking out messages and signs and guidance from all kinds of sources, the consistent message I have been getting is to rest. And that’s a really frustrating message for someone who has been fighting to reclaim her life, fighting to reclaim her sanity, fighting to reclaim her mental health. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. But you know what? It’s necessary. As much as I would love to shortcut the process and say, “Yes, I’m healed and everything is wonderful,” guess what? It doesn’t work that way. I have had nearly fifty years of trauma and pain and suffering building up in my body, building up in my nervous system.

And as much as I want this to be a fast healing process, I’ve had to accept that it isn’t going to be that easy—and that’s okay. To sit with that and be grateful that I am doing the work, to be grateful for myself. So, yeah, I have chosen this hard. I chose to leave my marriage. I chose to do some deep, hard, painful internal work. I chose to say no to the things that were not serving my greatest and highest good. I chose to do things that seem unconventional.

And trust me when I say those choices have cost me dearly.

But you know what? I’m glad I made those choices. I’m glad I finally said enough to the suffering, enough to the pain—which, ironically, meant more suffering and more pain, because the only way out is through.

The Privilege of Having Choices

We can’t judge the suffering or the pain that anyone is going through at any particular time, because we’re not living their life. We don’t know how that impacts them. I’ve said it before—and I’m going to say it again, and I’m going to keep telling people this—that I have spent years struggling to get out of bed every day. Some of that is due to health issues, some of that is due to depression. And there is so much shame around that. It’s funny, because I was just talking to my therapist this week about how deeply ashamed I am that here I am, out of my marriage, “living my best life” (or at least trying to), and I still have those days where the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is the fact that I have to be at my desk and at a meeting—because if I don’t, I won’t get a paycheck, and if I don’t get a paycheck, I won’t have a place to live.

Trust me when I say I am so grateful for my job. Like, I know I’ve simplified it and made it all about a paycheck, but honestly, my responsibility to that job is often the only thing that has gotten me out of bed in the morning. And I’m really grateful for that.

And the thing is, this isn’t hard because I chose it. Some of these things, even though I say I’m choosing to heal and choosing to do all these things, please understand that pieces of this I can’t choose. I didn’t choose to have CPTSD. I didn’t choose to have autism. I didn’t choose to have ADHD. And yet, when you combine all three of those—particularly the CPTSD and the severe trauma that I am healing from—there are days when I can’t choose to get out of bed unless I’m forced—which is what I did for years and years and years.

I’m also dealing with perimenopause, which I haven’t talked a whole lot about, and at some point we will talk about this because—let me tell you, perimenopause is hell, and it lasts so much longer than we think it does. It’s one of the things that our medical system has done very little study of. In fact, women’s hormone issues weren’t even really examined until starting in the ’80s. Even now, there is so much that doctors don’t know. In order to get my hormones under control—which we’re still working on, by the way—my regular doctor didn’t have the information or the knowledge needed to help me. I have been to doctor after doctor who told me I was crazy, that it was all in my head. I’ve been reading so much about the medical gaslighting of perimenopausal people, because doctors and medical professionals haven’t studied it enough.

And so I made the choice—again, choosing my hard—to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket to see a specialist. It’s not covered by insurance, and even if it was, she doesn’t take insurance. That is a choice I made, but also a choice born of privilege.

I was telling some friends the other day that after leaving my ex, I left behind most of my kitchen items. Other than a few really important favorites that I brought with me, I’ve had to completely start over with my kitchen items. Right now, my kitchen is a hodgepodge of things friends have given me, a few things I’ve bought, a few things I’ve thrifted.

And still, to this day, when I go to make something, I’m like, “Oh, crap—that thing is at my ex’s.” So now I have to improvise. And I’m content living like that, because rather than spending the money to take care of those things, I’ve set aside that money so I could see a specialist to get my hormones in order.

So, yeah, I chose my hard. But you know what? Not everyone has that choice. I’m really, really lucky that I managed to find a very low-cost place to live compared to the rest of places in the metro area. I’m very lucky to have a job that pays me a living wage. I’m very lucky that I get to work from home.

I recognize that not all women have that choice. Not all women can set aside the time and money to see a specialist to figure out what’s going on with their hormones.

Not every woman has the time and money to invest in therapy and coaching and a gazillion different books to help them overcome whatever is going on with them.

Grace, Not Guilt

Going back to what my therapist said—as I was telling her all of these things and in some ways lamenting that I wasn’t further along, that I still have these really, really hard days—she was just like, “You really gotta give yourself a break, and you gotta forgive yourself. You have to give yourself grace on those days when it is still really hard to function.” And without breaching any confidentiality, she said, “I have other patients in similar situations—some with less trauma—who still can’t get out of bed every morning. Some have done years and years of work, and guess what? They’re still struggling.”

And this isn’t about me being better than them or them being better than me. It isn’t a comparison of whose situation is worse or who’s doing better. It’s the fact that we are all different. We all have different capacities. We all have different levels at which we can choose our hard and which hard things we can choose to do.

Let’s Retire the Meme—and Respect Each Other’s Hard

So, going back to that meme about choosing your hard, to those people who want to share their “wisdom” about choosing to stay and fight for a marriage: maybe that was true for them and their marriage. Maybe it was true for them and their nervous-system capacity—but that doesn’t mean it’s true for anyone else.

And so, to those women out there who have chosen to leave a bad marriage, to those women who have chosen to stay in a bad marriage, to those women who have chosen to make a marriage work even when it was hard—I want to applaud you. But I also want to remind you that your choice was the very best choice you could have made for yourself at that time. I want you to know that I see you. I see your hard, and I know that not all of your hard was ever the easy choice the meme tells us it is.

I know that some of you are spending every single day struggling through those hard choices, struggling to heal, struggling to make your life better in spite of the really lousy hand that was dealt to you. I see you. And I want to tell you that nobody outside of yourself gets to tell you whether or not you chose the appropriate hard thing, because only you can make that decision. Only you can say, “I chose my hard, and the hard I chose was the very best choice I could have made, and I am doing the work every single day.” And you know what? Maybe you can’t do the work every single day because you’re exhausted and you can’t get out of bed—and that’s okay, too. You are making the best choices you can with what you have, and I applaud you. I want you to applaud yourself. And anyone who tries to shame you for that choice or tells you you’re being selfish—or tells you that you are wrong—they do not deserve space in your head.