Hailey Bieber says she’s had some of the ‘saddest, hardest moments I’ve ever had in my adult life’

Hailey Bieber has feelings too – just look at the Instagram Stories she posted late Wednesday night as indication, sharing in the classic white text on black background Emotional Realness template that “my mind and emotions have been fragile to say the least.”

In textbook Vaguestagram form, she doesn’t name any names, but Bieber seems to attract criticism for merely existing, especially for existing while being married to Justin Bieber, Gomez’s ex-boyfriend. Many, it would seem, have a problem with that, no matter how many photos Hailey Bieber and Selena pose for together or how many times Selena has gone to her own Stories to ask fans to stop sending Hailey death threats. Hailey, whether she asked for it or not, remains the villain of this story to a sizable corner of the internet and she’s not into it, to say the least.

“I like to make jokes about how I feel because sometimes it’s easier than admitting I’m having a hard time,” Hailey wrote on the first of the two slides she posted. “But truthfully since 2023 started I have had some of the saddest, hardest moments I’ve ever had in my adult life and my mind and emotions have been fragile to say the least. And I know so many other people feel the same way I feel, so just know you’re not alone ????.”

“That being said, let’s keep being there for one another,” she continued on the next slide. “Let’s be there for loved ones and friends and family and strangers. Let’s just be there for people. Let’s keep showing up for each other even when it’s hard. We’re better together.”

While Hailey isn’t really known for her jokes (wearing a Nepo Baby crop top doesn’t count), her latest plea for peace, love, and understanding recalls the words of another standby of pop culture: Nora Ephron.

In Heartburn, the novel based on the thinly fictionalised story of Ephron’s divorce from Carl Bernstein, which later became a movie starring Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and some truly stellar spaghetti carbonara, Ephron wrote, “Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

It’s a master class in owning the narrative, and winking toward Ephron’s woman-wronged storyline is a pro move also recently employed by Olivia Wilde in the whole Jason Sudeikis salad dressing debacle. Ephron’s heroines are flawed but relatable, and they always have a snappy comeback. It seems like the Ephronian quality that Bieber, Wilde, and all the others want most of all, however, is that the women at the center of Ephron’s stories always emerge victorious by the end of the book or movie, no matter what the world throws at them.

This article originally appeared on Vanity Fair.