Who's perfect, anyway?

When I was little, my mother was highly critical of me. My room was never perfect; no matter how much I laboured there would always be something to fix. My speech was constantly corrected; to this day everyone praises how articulate I am. And there were those times when I was compared to my friends, who “always did their homework on time” or “kept themselves clean”, etc.

My mom is not an ogre. She is just a perfectionist. Oh, she will deny it to the very end now that I am grown. (Motherhood is one of those things that is so difficult to get right that you may develop selective memory later on.) But it was hard to overcome the urge to be critical of myself growing up. Nothing was ever perfect. My hair, my body, my clothes, my artwork, my writing, and so on.

It took many years of practicing the art of self-forgiveness and of being self-aware to finally get to where I am today, which is a person who celebrates imperfection and laughs at her own quirks. Like when I left two pizza slices in the oven intending to heat them up and forgot about them for a week. SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!!! Or how my hair looks every morning no matter what I do at night(Pantene will never call me for a commercial).

Imperfection is beautiful, honest, and real. I’ve learned to love my flaws, forgive my mistakes, and look for the beauty in others who consider themselves imperfect. It’s a struggle to be sure; our society’s dastardly plan to keep us aiming for perfection never ceases. But I’m up for the challenge! :)