The struggle is real … and Bekah Martinez says we shouldn’t apologize for it. The Bachelor alum opened up about tough times in an Instagram caption on Tuesday, September 24.
“It’s funny…even though I see so many of us ‘getting real’ on IG these days, we always seem to preface or conclude it with something along the lines of ‘but I’m so grateful’ or ‘but I still love every moment of _____,’” Martinez, 24, observed in the caption of a photo of herself with daughter Ruth Ray, 7 months.
Speaking from personal experience, Martinez said that Instagram users shouldn’t feel the need to put on pretenses. “Sometimes that’s just not true,” she explained. “Sometimes we don’t want to admit that we’re just struggling. And sometimes we’re just protecting ourselves from negative feedback. I remember one time I posted ‘sometimes having a baby sucks’ and people lost their s–t.”
The podcast host — who came in fifth place during Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of The Bachelor — urged her followers to acknowledge that everyone has hardships. “Come on,” she wrote. “A lot of the time things DO suck and we DON’T feel grateful and we DON’T love every moment of it, even though there’s someone out there that would trade lives with you in a second. Admitting this doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you human.”
The reality star has certainly gotten real about her own struggles with parenting, like when she shared a stomach-turning photo of a diaper accident her daughter had in July. “Parenting: not for the faint of heart or stomach,” she captioned the NSFW pic.
Diaper mishaps notwithstanding, Martinez told Us Weekly last month that she would be “fine with five or six” more kids with boyfriend Grayston Leonard.
“Maybe just five,” she added. “But for now, we want to keep it just [Ruth] for a couple of years. We can travel with her really easily, so we want to stick with her and then go for the rest.”
The Bachelor season 24, starring Peter Weber, will premiere on ABC in January.
