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credit: Ayna @ imperfectwomen.com
Kate Gosselin left DWTS Monday night “with grace and sweetness.” Although those of us who contribute to IW share this sentiment, these are not our words. They belong to Kate’s mom.
In recent weeks, Kate’s mom and sister have quietly made their support of Kate known. For obvious reasons, they are not eager to bring attention to themselves, but they want to demonstrate that Kate has their full support as she continues her career post “Jon & Kate Plus 8.” A Facebook page was created by Kate’s mom and sister. They were kind enough to occasionally share updates directly from Kate as she undertook a scary challenge – learning to dance (in front of millions!) while also balancing her most important job – mother to 8 precious children.
A few of us were lucky enough to join and post on the page. It was such a positive experience to be able to show Kate’s family directly that she does have many fans who applaud her courage, persistence and desire to provide the best life possible for her kids. Kate’s family has already dealt with so much negativity directed at their loved one, it was really nice to be able to show them a little bit of the other side.
My sense is the family does its best to stay away from the written vitriol so thoughtlessly posted on the internet by individuals who really should know better. Unfortunately, some of it can’t escape their notice and in response to a particularly ugly post, her sister posted these words (I edited a few words in the interest of space).
“All I ask is that you consider two things. One, that you are not perfect either… so there is no room for imperfect people to judge others. NONE!
Two, that she does have family that your words do hurt. You can look at the family as innocents in this situation. You are hurting innocent people. I totally agree that you can have your own opinions. But you need to keep them to yourself. Calling someone names on a public forum lacks grace, understanding, and self-control. Your words are hurtful, whether true in your opinion or not.
Let’s say you have a son or daughter. Maybe you do! Imagine if complete strangers who never met your child began to judge him or her and say outrageously hurtful things about them WHETHER OR NOT they decided to put themselves on public display by their own choosing! Attaching swear words and unkind comparisons and judgments to your child when they never got to know your child’s tender heart, charming spirit, or great sense of humor would DEVASTATE YOU, would it not?
Imagine being a daughter watching these words people choose to say so off-handedly break your own mother’s heart. I experience this everyday.
Are you seriously NOT ashamed of this?!!!
Let’s sow seeds of LOVE, ACCEPTANCE, and KINDNESS into our world. NOT seeds of judgment no matter WHAT a person, in your opinion, has done or not done to “deserve” the criticism.”
Kind of hard to disagree with – wouldn’t you say? I have re-read these words a few times and have tried to take them into my own heart. Certainly those of us who have defended Kate have been guilty too of judging others and writing unkind things. It is a noble goal to try and be more tolerant of others who share different views than our own. Perhaps a more realistic aspiration, however, is to realize that we may have negative feelings towards these individuals, especially when we read their hateful rants, but we can choose the words we type wisely. We can ask ourselves – is it true, kind and helpful – and if the answer isn’t yes to all three, we can think about keeping our opinion to ourselves. Of course, we are imperfect and we will fail from time to time, but there is something to be said for trying.
Now onto the positive! Kate’s mom asked us to pass this along, “Thank everyone for ALL their wonderful support!!” to all of Kate’s supporters who voted for her each week on DWTS. She also asks that we continue to support Kate and tune into her new shows. Consider it done.
Now that Kate’s journey on DWTS has ended, a new Facebook page has been created to show support for Kate - I’m Voting for Kate Gosselin in Life! We will hold off giving a direct link, but a search on Facebook will lead you there. It would be nice to meet some other imperfect women over there.
Imperfectwomen.com will continue to cover Kate’s upcoming projects and we will have weekly show threads once the new shows begin.
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