NO MUM IS AN ISLAND
Reality show star tells how she shared dealing with early motherhood – but online trolls left her struggling to cope
LOVE Island Scot Camilla Thurlow says online abuse she got for sharing her struggles with early motherhood was one of the most vulnerable times of her life.
The mum of five-month-old baby Nell shared her night feed stories on Instagram but got negative comments telling her she was an attention seeker.
The criticism received by former Miss Edinburgh winner Camilla, who appeared on the hit show in 2017, made the first few weeks as a new mum “difficult”.
Speaking on the Sweat, Snot & Tears podcast, the 31-year-old said: “In those early weeks I found it so difficult when I was sharing some of the reality when I got nasty messages – I really struggled with it.
“It’s probably among the most vulnerable times in my life, I would say – I just would take it so much to heart.
“The ones I found hardest was when I was sharing those night feed stories that were getting this positive response but in amongst that there were responses from people who would say things like ‘You’re attention seeking’, ‘We don’t need to see this’ and ‘I don’t want to see this’.
“It’s that horrible thing where it stops you wanting to share what the reality is or what you’re actually thinking and feeling but you know that that does ongoing damage as well.
“Also, you’re responding to someone who has chosen to go down that route.
“You’re not responding to the 10 messages from women being like ‘thank you so much for doing this’ or ‘gosh you’ve just made me feel really so much better about the fact that my baby didn’t sleep last night either’.
“This one person will say something really horrible and you’ll change your behaviour based on that one comment as opposed to the other 10.
“But then I put up a poll because I was getting all these positive messages but I just wanted to check was it something that was useful and the poll asked ‘Should I continue doing this’ and the result of the poll was a resounding yes – I think it was upwards of 90 per cent.
“In the question I had written ‘I understand this is repetitive’.
“Someone messaged me and what she said really landed with me because she went ‘I’m so glad you’re doing it because it is repetitive and it is relentless’.”
Camilla, from Dumfries, described some of the comments as ‘ridiculous’ but that over time they don’t hurt as much.
She said: “The messages obviously exist forever and once you’ve read them, weirdly the negative ones are really hard to forget so I can still remember them but I look at them now – at four and a half months – and I’m like, ‘hmm, that actually wasn’t as bad as I thought’.”
The former bomb disposal worker, who rose to fame on the show with fiance Jamie Jewitt, said he helps her deal with negative comments: “It’s definitely not water off a duck’s back for me.
“I have just never been able to harness that power. Jamie is much better than I am with it actually. So he can help me rationalise some of the criticism.”