The other day I received a crafty birthday party invitation for my son that was made by a friend of mine. It was perfect; it was darling. It had a cute little bow and tags and fancy handwriting; it had layers and glitter and pizazz. It had a fun theme and perfect execution.

Instinctively, I thought of my own invites - most often a text or a scribbled note with dry markers on scratch paper. I felt an overwhelming urge to assert my worth as a woman and create cutesie invitations, which if I'm honest, would fail, leaving behind a trail of glitter and tattered self-worth. I thought of the friend who had sent the invitation, and was stabbed with a prick of envy and bitterness that she had the foresight, time, desire, and creativity to make such beautiful things. Naturally I concluded that my son probably thought I was a horrible mom because I lacked such invitation-making skills, which then led me to catalogue all of my other failures as a mother. In the beginning, I failed by binging on Twinkies during my pregnancy; then I failed because he didn't sleep through the night until he was 2; later, I failed because he wasn't potty-trained at 18 months; and eventually, I failed because I never did remember to dress him up as an elf on "Dress Like an Elf" day at school. This then led me to think about how I was failing at everything else in my life. I ended the session in a haze of self-loathing, and every time I saw that blastedly cute invitation the process started all over again.

Sound familiar?

I was at a beach on vacation last year, and there was a mother frolicking around with her children. Her body was a living version of Barbie. It was perky. It bounced in all the right places. It was smooth and taut and tanned. Instead of basking in the sun and seaside beauty, I spent my time resenting her and shamefully covering my own pasty and definitely not perky self with a towel.

This got me thinking "¦ what percentage of our day do we spend looking at, thinking about, envying, and yes, even hating, other women's good points? Oh, that gal is skinnier than I am - look at my flab. My friend is amazing at playing with her children - I'm such a lame mom. Her house is so clean - mine is a step away from being declared a public safety hazard. Her hair/butt/eyes/make-up/outfits are perfect, which of course means I am a frumpled disaster. She has a perfect singing voice-I sound like a dying cat. She makes the best desserts - I am a walking Pinterest fail. She is so well-spoken-I am like a broken record. Her children are always so well-dressed and clean - my kids look like they smeared on marshmallow goo and then rolled in dirt. Oh, look at her social media feed and all the cute things she did for her kids on St. Patrick's Day - not only did I not feed my kids green pancakes and milk, but I didn't even dress them in green (due to our dirty laundry build-up) which subjected them to an entire day of pinching. She is, she is, she is, and I am not, I am not, I am not.

Sound familiar?

Think of the last compliment you gave to another woman. Let me guess - did it sound something like this? "Wow, you are so (fill in the blank with whatever it is you are supposedly complimenting them on)! I could never (fill in the blank with a long list of your failures in that department)!" My brand of this equation was, "Your invitation was so amazing! I could never do that! I am such a loser at that stuff." Just take a step back and look at that twisted "compliment." Then, think of the last time you were talking about another woman with your girlfriends and something awesome that woman had done came up. What followed? Yep. The onslaught of comparisons, with each of you listing off how you have not met up to that perfect standard of that woman.

Sound familiar?

Ladies, we have a problem. A serious problem.

We can be a bit like Dementors from Harry Potter, who float around sucking people's souls and happiness out of them to feed their own dark existence. We might as well start each day with thinking, "Today, just to make myself miserable, I am going to focus on all of the joy and beauty of every woman I meet, compare it to the worst within myself, and use it to feed my own feelings of unworthiness." Yes, that is demented. What a way to live life! What a sad way to see things! Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why? Because we are finding our worth in all the wrong places. The way I see it, we've got it wrong in two ways.

First off, we are often measuring our worth by things that _don't matter_. Who the flip cares about perky body parts or the size of a waistline? What difference does it make if my healthy and thriving child walks at 10 months or 18 months?

How is having a perfect body or a trend-setting toddler, or any other point of comparison we obsess over, going to make me or those around me happier? How is gauging my success by the often shallow and transitory standards set by society going to help me _become_ someone that will not only radiate and live in joy, but who will share that joy with others? Using such measures of worth is like measuring the worth of a pearl by its oyster shell.

Secondly, we are measuring _our worth through __other___ women. We are programmed to feel that the success of another means our own failure. That's where we get it wrong.

Let me ask this: If we think another woman is awesome in some way, does that take some irretrievable slice of awesomeness away from our own pie chart? If my friend's house is cleaner than mine, does that automatically add more dust particles to the layer of dust in my house? If another mom plays so well with her children, does that automatically negate how well I read to mine?

The beauty of life is that joy, talents, goodness, the ability to uplift yourself and others, and yes, even the worth of individuals - are limitless. These are not scarce commodities that are tied to other people or things; they are abundant, and come from within ourselves.

Additionally, our beauty comes _because of our differences, not __in spite___ of them. We are each an imperfect, yet vibrantly colored thread; we are indeed beautiful on our own, but when woven together with different threads, we become part of a wonderful work of art. When threaded against other colors, our own color is not dulled; rather, its beauty is only magnified and enhanced, also becoming something much more strong than when it was alone.

And consider this: we aren't the only ones affected when we play this comparison game. Endlessly comparing not only breeds hatred of self, it also breeds hatred of others. Instead of being happy that our friends are wonderful, we nurse dark seeds of envy and resentment. Is that a true friendship? And hating random strangers for their perceived awesomeness - talk about one of the most belittling and mean-spirited exercises of human character!

When I think about the people who I love to be around, who I really and truly want to be like, who I seek out when I need a boost - it is not because of their perfect body or perfect children, or perfect anything, really. These are the friends who care about _me, not about __comparing_ themselves to me. They realize that their value is not determined by anyone else, but upon their innate worth and their ability to help others__ recognize _their worth. They radiate light and joy from their ability to be confident and happy with themselves, despite the successes they see in others that they may not have. Or better said, they radiate this joy, in part, __because_ of the good things they see in others. They rejoice__ in me, they rejoice in others, they rejoice in themselves, they rejoice in life.

So, yes, ladies, we have a problem. But the good news is that we have the total and complete power to solve it. It's in our hands, and begins with changing the way we look at ourselves and others. I'll start. I'm going to tell my friend, "The invitation that you gave me was so adorable! You're incredible!" And that's it. No addendum of self-insult. No self-hazing. No qualifier about my own invitation failures. Instead, I'll rejoice in her being her, and in me being me.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Inside-Out Minds. It has been republished here with permission.

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Yes. It's true. We're all going to die. In the meantime, however, I'd also like to live - except, nobody wants to let me live. They all want to remind me of how I'm going to die, how I'm going to cause my children to die...

I was packing my kid's lunch yesterday when, tossing in a Twinkie, I glanced at my kid's class newsletter that said if I feed my child Twinkies, I might as well be feeding him rocket fuel. Rocket fuel, sheetrock and Twinkies are made out of the same things. When I feed my child Twinkies, I am killing him.

I thought of replacing his Twinkie with an apple, but I didn't have organic apples, and regular apples are toxin-infected death bombs.

I came home from a run a couple weeks ago when my husband informed me of the latest research on running. If I run too much, it is worse than not moving at all. Ever. Basically, running is worse than being dead.

Recently, I told my pediatrician that my infant is breastfed and loving life. She asked if I'd heard about the latest study. Apparently, my milk doesn't have enough Vitamin D. She gave me supplements to help, so now my baby won't have a hunchback when he's 74. But, neither will my other kids - they'll all be dead because they were breastfed without Vitamin D drops.

A few months ago, I was sitting on the couch enjoying some cookies-and-cream ice cream when I saw an article stating that, to rats, Oreos are more addictive than cocaine. So, of course, since Oreo fluff is akin to cocaine - and cocaine kills rats - Oreos probably kill people.

Okay. So, I get it. And I'm with you. I too would like to die peacefully in my sleep at the age of 99 after having eaten an organic breakfast, followed by Zumba and a stimulating crossword puzzle. But here's the thing:

In our obsessive quest to ensure an ideal, high-quality death in the future, we are hijacking our shot at a joyful, high-quality life in the present.

I've known families living in debt because they will only eat, clean with, and bathe in all things organic. I've known parents who can't hold down jobs because they practically live in the ER and prescription drive-thru. I've known married couples who can't go out to eat on dates because no restaurant can cater to their special dietary whims.

Who wants to live this way? I understand that there are some legitimate scenarios where diets and lifestyles really do need to be adjusted. But, for the most part, all of this is getting completely out of hand. Even worse, we're running on information that is often false.

Take, for example, this article which tries to convince you that holding your child on your lap on an airplane is akin to climbing "the side of a sheer mountain with your baby in one arm and a pickaxe in the other." Yes. Exactly the same thing. Except that, in one instance, the chance of death is about 95 percent, and in the other, the chance of death equals about .00002 percent.

Real people are falling for fearmongering tactics and misinformation from others driven by profit and power - others vying for our dedicated readership. And it's controlling our lives.

In such articles, news and quotations tend to either leave out facts or misrepresent numbers. We're told things like, "You're 10 times more likely to die if..." And while such claims may be true, when you dig a little deeper and do the real math, 10 times a minuscule number still equals a minuscule number. Such differences in health, safety and life preservation almost always end up being negligible.

We are told that drinking diet soda will cause cancer. But when I did the research using primary sources (and by research, I don't mean anecdotal evidence, websites with agendas or other nonfactual junk), I found that most of the claims were absurd. For them to be true, I would have to be a rat who was injected with impossible amounts of artificial sweetener - every day - and then just maybe I could get cancer.

With the remote possibility that drinking soda might cause cancer, one will avoid soda for the rest of his life and will incessantly preach half-truth, cancer-filled details to his soda-loving friends and family.

Are you following me? Please say you are. Because this needs to stop.

Sure, the latest manipulative articles offering gross misinterpretations are never going to stop. But we can stop. We can stop falling for everything and use a little critical thinking. It's not hard to do research, to do math, to quiet the fear and live more happily.

I am still running outside regularly. The son who ate his Twinkies also licked sheetrock last summer. No joke. I threw out the Vitamin D drops, and I love eating genetically engineered apples. I occasionally fly on an airplane with a child in my lap while enjoying some carbonated poison. Not only are we all miraculously alive, but we're in good health and loving life, despite our risky lifestyle.

Don't get me wrong. We try to eat nutritious meals at our family dinners, we all buckle up in the car and we cancelled our family vacation to an Ebola-infested portion of West Africa. It's called using good judgment - moderation in all things"¦

It's called LIVING.

Even so, we're all still gonna die. But for the love of all things that are beautiful and amazing in life, please, live!

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