If you want to support independent women's media, become a Mamamia subscriber . Get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE. 

This article is an edited version of one that originally appeared on Tully Smyth's Substack. Sign up here .

I almost didn't reply.

If you've spent any time with a public profile on social media, you develop a pretty efficient triage system for your inbox.

You learn fast which messages deserve your energy and which ones you close, breathe through, and move on from. (Or laugh at, block and pretend your feelings weren't hurt.)

Watch: The bizarre reason some people are angry at Alex Cooper for being… pregnant. Post continues below.

After years on reality TV, a career as a social media content creator, a columnist, a podcast host, and now — somehow — a pregnant person on the internet, I've seen a lot.

But this one stopped me. And now it has me up at 3am.

It came in like so many do, with the classic opener: "Please don't take this the wrong way."

Which, as anyone who has ever received a message starting that way knows, is the universal signal that you are absolutely going to take it the wrong way, because something is coming.

Here's what she wrote:

"Hey Tully. Please don't take this the wrong way and I'm not trying to be one of 'those' people. But is there a reason you feel the need to have your stomach out majority of the time? I'm just asking out of curiosity? I understand being pregnant must be the most amazing feeling and is to be celebrated. But I have found a lot of influencers seem to show their stomachs off a lot more when pregnant. I love you and your content, I have since BB, but being someone who is 37 and now just being diagnosed with endometriosis, facing a new world of chronic illness and potentially fertility issues, it's hard having your 'bump' always there. Please be mindful of others! And I know, people just say unfollow, which I will. But also, sometimes people don't always want to see this."

I could feel the blood rushing to my face as my jaw tightened. My partner was halfway through telling me a story, but I'd already mentally checked out. My brain was caught somewhere between deep empathy and absolute outrage.

Because I could feel the pain underneath it.

A 37-year-old woman, finally finding the person she wanted to build a life with, then being blindsided by an endometriosis diagnosis. That is gutting. That is the kind of news that rewires everything you thought you knew about your future. I have enormous compassion for that.

"Don't engage. Don't add fuel to the fire. Just ignore it," my partner pleaded. Which, honestly, only enraged me further.

"That's easy for you to say! And frankly feels wildly unsupportive. Aren't you supposed to be on my side?"

He was, of course, on my side. He always is. But he was also trying to stop me from spiralling. Trying to prevent me from disappearing into a furious back-and-forth on my phone for the next hour, thumbs flying, heart racing.

But this stranger in my DMs had hit a nerve.

And I wasn't about to let it slide.

Because what was being asked of me, underneath the softened language and the apologies, was this: could you make yourself a little less visible, because my pain finds you inconvenient.

I've spent 38 years getting to this moment. Thirty-eight years.

And the reality of being pregnant — the unglamorous, uncurated reality — is that your body changes faster than your wardrobe can keep up with. I'm not posing with my stomach out for content. I'm wearing the clothes I own, which no longer fit the way they used to, because growing a human being does that. The alternative is buying an entirely new wardrobe every few weeks as my body shifts, which is neither practical nor something I'm particularly interested in doing.

On top of that, at almost 34 weeks pregnant, I've reached the stage where I genuinely cannot tolerate anything pressing on my stomach.

The high-waisted Lululemon tights that served me so well for months now feel tight and restrictive. Honestly, every pair of pants I own feels vaguely suffocating at this point.

The only time I'm remotely comfortable is in my pyjamas, which are approximately four sizes bigger than what I'd normally wear and feature a drawstring waistband that I wear, you guessed it, underneath my bump.

In fact, I'm writing this in them now.

My current "uniform" consists of an oversized long-sleeve top that naturally rolls up and settles somewhere beneath my boobs, paired with very loose drawstring pants intentionally worn under my stomach. It is currently the one and only outfit I can tolerate for more than about seven minutes at a time.

(I hate that I even feel the need to defend or explain that.)

So yes. Sometimes my stomach is visible. That's not a statement. That's just Tuesday.

I wrote back. I was honest — maybe more direct than she expected. And to her credit, she came back with something that surprised me. She acknowledged that she'd overstepped. She apologised, twice.

She admitted she has no real understanding of what it's like to live publicly online and how that shapes the way you receive messages like hers.

That took something. I respect it.

But here's what's woken me up at 3:04 am and driven me to the couch, laptop glowing in the dark whilst my cat stares at me expectantly, convinced it's somehow breakfast time in the middle of the night.

We are living through an era where pain has become currency. And I don't mean that cynically — I mean that we are all, collectively, carrying so much.

Grief, health scares, fertility journeys, relationship losses, diagnoses that arrive like a kick to the guts.

Social media holds all of it simultaneously, in one endless, churning feed. Your joy sits next to someone's devastation. My pregnancy announcement lands in the same scroll as someone's fifth failed IVF cycle.

That is genuinely hard to navigate… for everyone.

But the answer to that cannot be asking other people to disappear.

I don't say this lightly, I say it as someone who lost her mother to early-onset dementia, who has done her own fertility preservation, who has had her most vulnerable moments dissected publicly — other people's joy is not the cause of your pain. It can trigger it.

It can illuminate it. It can make it feel suddenly, unbearably loud. But it is not the cause.

And when we redirect our pain outward, toward the person whose life looks like the one we wanted, we are not protecting ourselves. We are just finding somewhere softer to land.

I've done it. I'd be a liar if I said I hadn't.

The difference is what we do when we notice it.

This woman noticed it. Eventually. And she said so. That's not nothing — in fact, in the landscape of internet interactions, that's actually quite rare and quite beautiful.

So I'm not writing this to shame her. I'm writing this because I think so many of us are navigating some version of this exact dynamic, every single day.

Listen: Sarah Abo shared stories of miscarriage and fertility struggles that you just would not have heard on mainstream morning telly a few years back. Post continues below.

We're scrolling through lives that look like everything we're waiting for, everything we're afraid we might never have, and we're trying to figure out what to do with that feeling.

My suggestion — and take it or leave it — is to feel it without firing it.

Journal it. Call a friend. Sit in the discomfort of wanting something you don't have yet, without making someone else responsible for the wanting.

Because the internet is full of people living their lives. Pregnant people, engaged people, people who got the job, the house, the baby, the diagnosis that turned out okay.

You cannot curate your feed into a space that never hurts you. Life will find a way through.

What you can do is get a little more curious about the hurt. Ask it what it actually needs. Nine times out of ten, it's not asking someone to put their stomach away.

It's asking you to keep going.

And you can do that.

Blooming late is still blooming.

Sign up to Tully Symth's Substack here and check out her Instagram @tee_smyth

Feature Image: Supplied.