IMPERFECTIONS - The beautiful imperfections of motherhood
“Nobody’s perfect”, “Nothing’s perfect”. These phrases we hear or may say to ourselves all the time seem incredibly obvious especially as we navigate the journey of motherhood.
Those first few months will set the rhythm of expectations straight out the window.
As we admire the perfection of our newborn in our arms, we can't help but feel overwhelm and stress on the other imperfections in our lives. This doesn't change as they grow older either and self doubt and mummy guilt seeps in.
We all have a natural tendency to demand perfection sometimes. If we recognise what these imperfections are, then we’ll have an easier time to disregard them. Here are 5 imperfections that creep into our thoughts without us even knowing it.
IMPERFECTION 1: We are not living up to the standards of others.
It’s impossible to have the approval of everyone in the world. When the kitchen is overflowing, and the house is a mess, you sometimes feel like you are failing. You're heart is full but you are physically and mentally exhausted after endless wake ups through the night.
Unfortunately, life isn’t so simple as being able to pick and choose who we interact with on a daily basis and sometimes this makes the pressure worse. A baby sleeping through the night when yours is not, a mother perfectly dressed when you have barely had time to shower today or a partner returning home to a kitchen full of dishes. We may feel like we begin to regularly disappoint others and ourselves without even knowing it. At the end of the day, you need to let go of these standards and understand that this is only temporary and does not define you.
And the reality is, most people won't even notice or are too busy dealing with their own set of imperfections. There will be people who will embrace you for the imperfectly perfect you.
Don't let the imperfection be so dominating that it controls our destiny for us.
IMPERFECTION 2: We failed at something.
This one can attack us in subtle ways we don’t even realise. Let’s say you like the idea of baking and want to take it up as a hobby in preparation for that 1st bday cake creation you envisioned. After the initial enthusiasm of buying the materials and watching Youtube tutorials, we get disheartened by your first project which looks like a complete mess. You’ve already learned so much about baking by this stage, but given how badly your cake turned out you abandon the new skill instead of trying to progress from there and get better.
This is a difficult imperfection to shake off in this day and age. The media constantly shows off all these stories about people who reached the pinnacle of success in their field. These images are heavily edited, because otherwise they would be large boring books about how dull and repetitive these people’s lives were before they became good at something. That baked cake may not look like the perfect instagrammable image but the outpour of love, the sweetness of the cake and baking failure may be come a laughable memory to look back years later with your child. Remember, progress is always better than perfection!
IMPERFECTION 3: There’s things we did in the past we’re ashamed of.
Imagine if we had access to platforms like Twitter and TikTok when we were teenagers. At some point in our lives, we’d be desperately trying to remember the passwords for emails like “h0t_punkr0ck_g1rl@hotmail.com” so we could remove all the cringeworthy and embarrassing things we wrote. Having regrets is part and parcel in life, and the person we used to be is not the same as the person we are now.
Your past only matters as much as you want it to, and nobody has any right to judge you for it.
Take the example of Melissa Leong from Masterchef. She was found out for having written tweets from 2012 making fun of the show and its contestants. When asked why she didn’t delete the tweets, she defended herself by saying she didn’t need to present a “sanitized” version of herself on social media, and that her perspective has grown and changed over time. If she was able to publicly write something bad about Masterchef and become a judge on the show, why should your memories hold you back from who you want to become?
IMPERFECTION 4: Things don’t turn out the way we want them to.
A good way to sabotage our own happiness is to have expectations.
If we have high expectations, we’ll always feel let down when those heights aren’t reached. On the other hand, constantly lowering our expectations leads us down the road of becoming more miserable and pessimistic about what life can provide. Expectations can be extremely harmful when we push them onto others whether we mean to or not. We might remember our own parents’ expectations being too much of us when we were younger, and then unwittingly push those same expectations onto our own kids!
Having zero expectations is what we need to aim for. No expectations allow us to stay concentrated in the present moment and appreciate what we have now, instead of hoping things will get better in the future.
IMPERFECTION 5: Life can be challenging and difficult.
Life isn’t an easy journey and there may be a strong temptation to find the perfect solution to all the difficulties presented to us in our day-to-day lives. It’s true. Reality is tough to deal with sometimes and even more so with lockdowns and the Corona Virus unfolding.
That doesn’t mean though that you need to feel desperately unhappy all the time. 'Life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be had' are wise words from Alan Watts.
Sometimes we run into difficulties that we should work through, and it’s a shared experience we all have.
The more you try to think positively, the better you’ll get. Don’t be afraid to seek out family and friends who can empathise with you though. Taking on all the mental responsibility of putting up with the pain is admirable but doesn’t do your mental health any service. Reach out for those who will help get you through the tough times and remember to have their back when they’re going through the same thing too!
Motherhood will quickly teach you to appreciate the imperfections and how simple the joyful things in life is actually as easy as staring into your child's face as they peacefully sleep.