Where Did This Come From, and Does It Belong to Me?

I have been really trying to be less self-conscious about my appearance when I post on social media. There is, and has always been, a loud voice in the back of my head that says mean things. I don’t care. You’re so dumb. Shut up. The mean dialogue keeps going if I let it. I have mostly shaken loose of that particular fear. This is my page and my offers, and if someone doesn’t like it, they can scroll past, or unfollow, or unfriend, and that’s alright.

About the time I let go of that noise, I was greeted by the next wave. She must need money. Did she lose her job? If her husband’s business must not be doing well, look at her trying to sell and peddle her side businesses on social media. I would quiet that voice and another wave would start with something new, and on and on it went.

Slowly I started to accept that my program, my life, my offers, aren’t meant for everyone. That’s fine. But if I silence myself and don’t publish, how are the people who are meant to find me going to find me? So I started with coffee chats, hopping on a few days a week to share a message. My goal has always been to feel like sitting on the porch at a close friend’s house. Coffee, tea, maybe wine or whiskey, just talking. I am not meant to be flashy or succinct. I’m southern and my tales are winding. I try hard not to tell anyone what to do. I try instead to make space for what they already want to do, by letting my life, my trials and my tribulations, be a mirror for what they might see in their own.

It’s funny how we handle the feedback that comes with putting ourselves out there. Not long ago, my cousin told me she couldn’t wait for my videos and podcasts to drop. She told me she could listen to my voice all day long, that it’s soothing and comforting to her. Having a soothing voice is a genuine benefit and a positive thing when you’re using your voice to connect with people. But do I replay that in my head when I’m driving or trying to fall asleep? Never. It is so easy to dismiss praise, to brush it off with a quick “thank you” and let it float away, precisely because it feels safe. The hard stuff, though—the sharp, stinging stuff—that’s what hooks into us.

I recently had lunch with a friend. It was her birthday, we were celebratory, we hadn’t gotten together in person in a while. We were at a cafe after a day of shopping. She is supportive and real. She is whip smart. She can also be misunderstood and a little off-putting. Eccentric, funny, all of it at once. We were talking about my work, my podcast, my short morning coffee chats, and she shared some feedback with me.

She made a blunt, critical comment about my appearance on camera—specifically pointing out my mouth and lip color choices, saying it was so distracting she couldn’t even focus on my message. I was stunned. I was hurt. We were sitting in a beautiful cafe with music playing and amazing food in front of us—fried seafood sitting heavy on my stomach—and I completely lost my appetite like I’d been punched in the gut. I know the feedback came from a place that felt like love to her. Maybe a little jealousy tangled in there too, or something else entirely. I can’t know that for certain and I try not to guess at people’s hearts.

She also told me my podcast stories come across as more braggart and self-indulgent than reflective. I had shared the first few episodes with her before they were even live, excited to put them out into the world. After that lunch I carried the weight of maybe I shouldn’t, maybe I should back up, I wasn’t good enough or prepared to do this. I forged ahead anyway. But I was hurt and speechless, and instead of filtering the feedback and choosing not to let it land, I didn’t. I wish I could tell you I had.

What hurt most about that feedback is that it wasn’t meant to be hurtful. Could it have been said with more tact? Sure. It wasn’t. We’re still friends. I haven’t even asked her if she’s listened to any recent episodes, because I’m afraid to open that door again. Not because I can’t handle feedback, but because I am so new at this, like a fawn just born on shaky legs, building something from the ground up. I’m more of a yearling now than a newborn fawn, some legs under me, but still timid, still cautious, and I expect I’ll stay that way a while longer. It will be some time before I’m my full, solid, majestic self, and more criticism about my voice or my message right now could curtail the momentum I’m just starting to feel.

Even now, months later, I naturally shy away from a bolder, deeper lipstick, one I genuinely love. There isn’t a day I sit at my vanity that I don’t replay those words. I catch myself checking the rearview mirror while I drive. I judge every selfie, every photo, looking for the thing she named. My self-esteem takes the hit every single time. I only recently started publishing videos again, and the difference now is that I cannot watch them back. I don’t run them through an editor for clarity or polish, because if I have to do one thing more than hit upload, I will talk myself out of posting at all.

Handling Negative Feedback with the Four Gates

I don’t remember where I first heard the framework I’m about to describe, so I can’t give proper credit, but I try to use it now every time someone hands me feedback, and every time I’m tempted to hand feedback to someone else. I call it the Four Gates of Feedback, and it’s four simple questions:

1. Is it true? Not your perception of true, not what you believe, not an opinion dressed up as fact. Is it based on something you actually know?
2. Is it kind? Is the message well-meaning, for the good of the person receiving it, meant to enrich their life rather than serve your own need to say it?
3. Is it helpful? Can the person actually do something with it? Does it change behavior, or improve something, or is it just a fact sitting there with nowhere to go?
4. Is it necessary? What happens if you don’t say it? Will someone get hurt by the silence? Is there a real cost to holding it back?

I have been forcing myself to run my friend’s comment through those same four gates.

Was it true? Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that it was an opinion, not a fact.

Was it kind? No. Not really. Full stop, no.

Was it helpful? No. Pointing out facial features or movements only deepened a sense of insecurity I already carried. The note about the lip liner being too dark, on its own, might have been useful. The rest of it wasn’t.

Was it necessary? No. Nothing dangerous or life-altering was at stake. There was nothing to gain by sharing it, nothing that could have changed for the better because it was said.

Running feedback through those same four gates when you’re on the receiving end can help you decide how much room to give it in your head. Unfortunately for me, this particular comment seems to have filed itself straight into the part of my brain that says Replay at 2:00 AM.

Then I talked with one of my sisters. We talk practically every day. She’s bold, outspoken, endlessly social, so much fun, everything I’m not. I’m quieter, more introverted. But she’s one of my best friends, one of my biggest supporters, and I’m the same for her. She’d attended a Seed to Sprout Session and it truly helped her set a clear, enforceable boundary, so I knew firsthand that what I was building could help her. She was hesitant about the podcast though, not quite ready. It’s different for her to see me as a host, a coach, instead of just her big sister. That’s a different lens, and everything she knows about my past, my weight loss, the whole long list, colors her view of the show in a way that people who meet me first through my work never have to work around. I pleaded with her anyway, asked her to listen and tell me what she thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

She told me flat out, “If you’re gonna coach, then coach.” She felt my messages weren’t specific enough, that without a bulleted list of exactly what to do, it wasn’t really coaching. I ran her words through the same four gates I’d used on my friend’s comment, mostly out of habit by that point. Was it true? As far as she experiences it, yes, my episodes don’t hand out steps, that part is accurate. Was it kind? I believe so. She wasn’t trying to wound me, she was trying to help me be more useful to her. Was it helpful? In its own way, yes, it made me sit down and get honest, in words, about what kind of coach I actually am, which I hadn’t done quite that plainly before. Was it necessary? I think so too. Better to know now than to keep sending her episodes that were never going to be for her. She passed through every gate.

That’s the real difference between what she said and what my friend said. It isn’t that my sister was right and my friend was wrong, or the other way around. It’s that one comment could not have improved a single thing about me no matter how I turned it. The other one, even though it stung a little going down, actually clarified something I needed to say out loud.

And she’s right about one part of it completely. Some people need it laid out one, two, three, a specific path to follow, or they won’t move at all, and there’s not a thing wrong with needing that.

Think about bowling. When you step up to the lane and release the ball, there’s that instant thrill—watching it roll clean and smooth, heading straight for the pins, full of momentum and possibility. But then there are the times you let go, and before the ball even gets a foot down the hardwood, it veers hard right and drops straight into the gutter with a dull thud. Total deflation.

For a child learning to bowl, those bumpers don’t force the ball into a single rigid path. Instead, they keep the ball on the lane so it can hit the pins. They steer the ball in the direction it needs to go while preventing it from falling away into the gutter.

That’s it. That is the whole reason The Bloom looks the way it does. I’ve spent years trying other people’s steps. Eat this, not that. Move this way, not that way. It never once stuck, because I’m wired to go all or nothing, and the day I miss a step I decide I’ve already failed and I walk away from the whole thing. Somewhere in there I realized I’m probably not the only woman built that way, that there are plenty of us who need something to lean on that still leaves room to move, guardrails instead of rules. It isn’t a ladder you climb the same way every time. It’s closer to a trail that bends around whatever’s actually growing there. One woman on that trail might be working on money and the mindset underneath it. Another might be pruning something one-sided out of her life. Another might be starting something brand new, the way I am. Different footing, same trail.

Seasonality is one of the five lenses in that framework, the reminder that nothing in nature blooms all year long, and none of us are meant to either. If I handed everyone the same steps in the same order, I’d be asking every woman to bloom on my timeline instead of her own, and that’s exactly the thing I’m trying to move away from, not add more of. No single blood pressure pill works for every body. No single diet fits every body. I don’t know why we’d expect one path to change to fit every woman either. So instead of a checklist, I built five lenses, five questions I ask myself and hand to my clients, to help each of us figure out what we actually need right now, not what worked for somebody else on a stage somewhere.

My sister is one of the women who needs it laid out plainer than that, it turns out, and that’s alright. She still calls me every single day. She still loves my voice, even when she doesn’t want my method. I’ll take that trade.

You’d think, with all the time I spend running my husband to follow-up appointments, working my full-time job, and building The Bloom on the side, my brain would be too tired to replay a months-old comment. Right on schedule, there it is anyway.

But Jimmy is improving. Improving enough now that he’s fussing about all the appointments, bored stiff, ready to climb the walls if he could. So much so that I’ve agreed to take him to the camp this weekend. He’s agreed he can’t use a climber. We’re still deep in debate about which stand he can use. I want him in a ground blind. He wants to be twelve feet up in a ladder stand. That’s not happening, and it’s built for one person anyway, so I couldn’t even sit with him if I wanted to. We’re still discussing it like he has any real choice in the matter. He still can’t drive, so I’ll just hide the keys and refuse to take him, at least until Saturday, when the doctor says he’s cleared. We’ll see. I am so very grateful to have him here to argue about tree stands with. Things could have gone a different way, and I don’t take that for granted.

Take a listen to the podcast this week, The Greenhouse, available wherever you stream. I’d love to know what you think—a rating or a review means more than you know. And if you’re carrying something you haven’t set down yet, come sit with me at a Seed to Sprout Session. In ninety minutes, for ninety-seven dollars, you’ll name the pillar in your life that’s asking for care right now, plus walk away with a clear boundary and a script to say it out loud. Sign up at maintainingmelinda.com/permission and I’ll send you a permission slip every Friday. Permission to rest. Permission to just be. Come tend what matters with me.

You matter.

Melinda