{"id":4378,"date":"2015-11-26T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=4378"},"modified":"2015-11-25T22:16:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T05:16:28","slug":"guest-blogger-genevieve-v-georget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/guest-blogger-genevieve-v-georget\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blogger Genevieve V. Georget"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Genevieve<\/a>Genevieve V. Georget graciously gave me permission to re-post her October 5, 2015 Facebook post. The response to her post was surreal: Over 250,000 likes and 143,000 shares.<\/p>\n

Genevieve’s post\u00a0 is an excellent example of extraordinary writing that touches the heart.<\/p>\n

Guest Blogger Genevieve V. Georget:<\/p>\n

It was a Wednesday afternoon when I walked into Starbucks that day nearly six years ago. I stood at the bar, waiting for my drink, when the barista politely asked me what I was up to that day. As it turns out, I was en route to the airport at that moment\u2026about to catch a flight to Italy with my husband. After a brief minute of chatting, the barista handed me my coffee and wished me a nice trip. \u201cBut then again\u201d, she said \u201cwhy wouldn\u2019t you\u2026your life is golden!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit\u2026the gold star was nice. But at the same time, the words knocked the wind out of me. She wasn\u2019t being rude. She wasn\u2019t being sarcastic. In fact, she was being totally genuine. And that\u2019s the part that really took my breath away.<\/p>\n

Because here\u2019s the thing\u2026<\/p>\n

This lovely girl saw me for all of five minutes a day. Usually all dressed up on the way to my full-time job at one of the country\u2019s most prestigious art galleries. Or with my camera in hand to photograph two people in love. Or, yes, on my way to Italy for ten days to celebrate my anniversary. This is what she saw. Therefore, this is what she knew.<\/p>\n

And truth be told, there is darkness in this kind of knowledge. Especially now, when so many of our connections happen only five minutes at a time\u2026fully filtered and perfectly hash tagged. In our defense though, it\u2019s not entirely our fault. That battle we\u2019re fighting\u2026those rough days we’re having\u2026they don\u2019t tend to translate very well when you have twenty people in line behind you for coffee or a hundred and forty characters to spell out your day.<\/p>\n

Honestly, what was I going to tell my barista?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, we\u2019re flying to Europe. I just miscarried our baby\u2026we had a terrifying health scare\u2026I\u2019m suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder\u2026and we\u2019re feeling pretty far from God right now. So, yeah, going to Italy seemed as good a place as any to just run away from our life and justifiably eat gelato twelve times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

No. I wasn\u2019t going to tell her this. Because shocking total strangers into oblivion is a bit harsh and cruel. Especially when she\u2019s the girl in charge of making your coffee every day.<\/p>\n

But I did spend the entirety of that flight wondering; about our sense of authenticity\u2026our collective vulnerability\u2026our polished identity. And it made me feel like a total fraud. Because I\u2019m not any of those things that this girl sees on the other side of her coffee bar.<\/p>\n

If I showed up one morning, wearing my most ragged and scarred self\u2026it would be a very different girl staring back at her [and she would likely feel inclined to serve me alcohol instead of coffee!]\u2026<\/p>\n

Because I was bullied a lot as a teenager.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid of thunderstorms.<\/p>\n

I spend an absurd amount of time worrying about what other people think of me.<\/p>\n

My biggest challenge in life is letting go of people. Even if they hurt me.<\/p>\n

I hide behind my humor for fear that people won\u2019t accept me without it.<\/p>\n

I feel like I have failed as a daughter.<\/p>\n

I try to avoid big groups so that I won\u2019t feel like the invisible one among it.<\/p>\n

I’m insanely self-conscious of my smile.<\/p>\n

I feel like I\u2019m an easy person to walk away from in life\u2026and it haunts me on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

I almost always operate under the assumption that I care more about everyone else than they do about me.<\/p>\n

I unfollow people on Instagram if their life seems too perfect because it makes me feel inadequate.<\/p>\n

I feel like a terrible mother pretty much all the time.<\/p>\n

I hate emptying the dishwasher.<\/p>\n

Every day, I\u2019m afraid that my husband is going to wake up and finally realize how much crazy he married.<\/p>\n

I thank God for every day that he doesn\u2019t!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like to try new foods\u2026so I travel with my own jar of peanut butter.<\/p>\n

I want to write a book so badly that it hurts. But I\u2019m afraid of people telling me that my life was never worth telling.<\/p>\n

I struggle, every single day, with feeling like I\u2019m enough. Skinny enough. Funny enough. Good enough.<\/p>\n

And I cry. A lot.<\/p>\n

I highly doubt I would get a gold star for any of this. But, now, six years later, I do know one thing for sure; that even with all of my frailty\u2026all of my fears\u2026and all my faults\u2026none of those things make my life any less golden.<\/p>\n

Scars tell stories. Scars mean survival. Scars mean you showed up for the fight instead of running from it.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve all got them\u2026even the sweet girl serving my coffee. She\u2019s fighting her own battle\u2026defending her own front line\u2026struggling in her own way.<\/p>\n

And maybe it\u2019s not about collecting gold stars for the perceived reality we give the world on Facebook\u2026but it\u2019s about the purple hearts we get for living bravely among the real one.<\/p>\n

Because life requires guts\u2026it requires bravery\u2026and it requires vulnerability.<\/p>\n

So, buy your coffee\u2026wear your scars proudly\u2026and carry on, dear soldier\u2026<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not in this battle alone.<\/p>\n

GENEVIEVE V. GEORGET<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My name is Genevieve…but you can call me Gen…<\/p>\n

I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a daughter and I am a grand-daughter. I am a sister. I am a niece and I am an aunt. I am a friend. I am a child of God. I am addicted to Facebook. I am the year of the horse and Gaelic for white wave. I am a summer baby and the sign of Cancer. I am a reader and I am a storyteller. I am putting my life on paper. I am the victim of people’s hair fetishes. I am a lover of Gap commercials and strawberry season. I am a Starbucks junkie. I am a hockey fan. I am a lover and not a fighter. I am lost without peanut butter. I am the alter ego of a wolf and a politician in a past life. I am urban and I am in love. I am happiest at home and most comfortable in my flip-flops. I am a fabulous photograph on my driver’s license. I am an only child and the baby of the family. I am a work in progress and always in recovery from something. I am trying to let go and still reaching for your hand. I believe that naps and dancing in the kitchen can cure just about anything. I am often wondering what happens next. I am proof that time heals all wounds. I am a hopeless romantic and madly in love. I am a believer that everyone has a story and I am still unwritten. I am a frequent visitor of any bookstore and I am a woman of mystery. I am craving chocolate. I am searching for answers and I am enchanted by my friends. I am tripping on toy cars and I am constantly cleaning up cheerios. I am afraid of thunderstorms and losing the people that I love. I am raising my hands to the heavens and I am thanking my lucky stars. I am almost always found on one side of a camera and I often feel that music is the only thing left that makes sense in the world. I am living and I am learning. I am convinced, as the saying goes, not all who wander, are lost.<\/p>\n

Basically, I’m just a girl. Writing herself into wholeness.<\/p>\n

photo credit: |\u00a0Richelle Hunter Photography<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genevieve V. Georget graciously gave me permission to re-post her October 5, 2015 Facebook post. The response to her post was surreal: Over 250,000 likes and 143,000 shares. Genevieve’s post\u00a0 is an excellent example of extraordinary writing that touches the heart. Guest Blogger Genevieve V. Georget: It was a Wednesday afternoon when I walked into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[814],"class_list":["post-4378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-genieve-v-georget"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-18C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4378"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4404,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions\/4404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}