March 10, 2022
Hey, friend. Have you ever felt pressure from other people’s opinions? Like this crippling fear from having eyes on you, whether through social media or just people in your life around you watching and judging (or at least it feels like they’re judging, right?) Well if you’ve ever felt that struggle and pressure, today’s guest is such a special treat for all of us! We get to talk with the beautiful Bella Rob Mayo.
If you’re not already familiar with her, Bella is a creative artist and poet. Her first book titled My Greenhouse was released in September of 2021. Bella grew up in the spotlight on the hit reality show Duck Dynasty. Her main platform now is Instagram where she shares her love of art, travel, photography, fitness, and domestic living with her many followers. She and her husband, Jacob Mayo got married in June of this past year and they now live in Louisiana and run an online vintage clothing store, @general.vintage that has over 10k loyal followers and hundreds of happy shoppers.
In today’s powerful conversation, we talked with Bella about staying true to yourself in the public eye, how to stand firm in your faith when people are watching, what it was like growing up in the limelight on a hit reality tv show, and how to handle hate comments and other people’s opinions of you. This episode is just packed full of goodness and rich with truth and helpful information for navigating an online presence in today’s day and age.
Filming their pilot season when she was eight years old and her sister was in 8th grade. For her sister, it was hard to go into high school and have people with a lot of different opinions about her. For Bella’s sister, no one wanted to be her friend but for Bella in middle school, everyone wanted to be her friend. Bella loved it. She was having the best time and didn’t think anything of it, it was just what they did.
Having to miss a ton of school Bella would find herself telling her friends, “I have to go I have hair and makeup” and remember thinking nothing of it. It was normal for her to skip school to go film or get her hair and makeup done. The show ended when she was 13 or 14 and never felt like she dealt with the pressure of the tv show, it was more so the aftermath.
When the show ended, Bella’s parents had her social media accounts private when she was a kid. When the show ended around when she was 14 or so she decided to go public on Instagram and didn’t think anything of it. Before going public she had around 1k followers, then she hit public and her phone crashed. That next morning she had almost 200k followers. It was all the requests that were pending that were then accepted all of a sudden with her account going public.
From then on things felt crazy for her then. That was when she was in high school and no one wanted to be her friend. It was the pressure of being her friend but not looking like they were trying. During Bella’s freshman year she ended up leaving school and went completely online. After leaving school and going online she got to dive into her creativity and do art. That’s when she fell in love with Instagram and not having the pressure of kids from school. Over time Bella has had to learn how to stand her ground. She knows who she is, her family knows who she is and the Lord knows who she is and that is enough for her.
Bella does keep a large amount of her life private still on Instagram. She shares what she wants to. She has never wanted her whole life on Instagram and thinks that is why she hasn’t received as many hate comments. People say Instagram shouldn’t be a highlight reel, but for Bella, she tells you this is a highlight reel for her. She doesn’t want to share her personal life. She doesn’t believe her personal everyday struggles are meant to be shared on social media. She will share those with the people close to her in her everyday life and not going to come on Instagram and lend herself to be blasted.
Bella got married when she was just about to turn 19. Right, when she got engaged she was so excited about it and posted their engagement photos. All of a sudden it hit, every single comment was “You’re getting engaged at 18??”, “Getting married? This is sick”, “This is disgusting”, “I want to call the police”. Half the comments were like this makes me sick and that was one of the hardest things Bella has gone through. Jacob her husband is 22 now but was 21 when they got married. Bella’s parents got married at 18, her grandparents got married at 18, her brother got married at 18. It was no different to her and didn’t think anything of it when they got engaged. Her parents didn’t think anything of it.
It was a misunderstanding. Most cultures these days don’t have that. But where Bella lives and from it’s not too far off for her family.
It depends on the person, who you are, how you are raised. It also depends on the person you’re with. When Bella got married, the day she got married, People magazine had the rights to her photos before she posted them. People magazine posted their wedding photo with the caption “Bella Robertson, 18 gets married” and makes the comment about her being really young. They made the headline of it that she was young and the comments were ridiculous. It was so bad that people magazine went back and changed their caption to “Bella Robertson gets married”.
Being married at 18 is not easy, we are still growing up and learning. We’re at the height of our youth. We’ve been together two years now, it’s not always easy, but it is worth it. This is exactly what she wanted and believe the way we have done it God has behind us in it all. Because they have really leaned into Him and pressed into Him they have the strength to move forward.
Bella didn’t care before, she used to share so much about her faith. It’s so much a part of her life that it bleeds into everything that she does. Sometimes she can’t post and say “Thank you Jesus for this”. It’s in every part of her life so there’s really not a way to hide it.
When she came out with her book this past year. It was a big turning point for her. Bella’s book is not necessarily a Christian book, but it isn’t Christian. She didn’t want it to be. She particularly wanted this book to reach everyone because it wasn’t about that. It’s about heartbreak and love and didn’t want her book to steal from that. Didn’t want to steal people who don’t believe or have faith from reading it.
Bella became so worried about the people who would read her book that she is really weird about posting faith stuff on social media. She started to worry that if she posted a faith post no one would read her book. If she posted something around faith and people unfollow her or don’t read her book. That was the hardest and worst time for Bella being worried about what people thought of her being a person of faith.
Now she realizes that her book is bringing so many people who don’t believe to her social media, if they read her book whether they are a Christian or not, if they liked her and want to follow her now they can find who she really is and her faith. While her book is not, Bella still is a person of faith. Whether her book is a Christian book or not she is still Christian. She will always say who she is.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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