Imperfection

Here's the prompt that I chose from Mama Kat this week - choose a theme word to live by in 2014 and tell us why you chose it 

Imperfection 

I have been spending some time thinking about what I want for 2014.  What would I like to change?  What kind of goal should I set for myself?  I had many half-formed thoughts but was having a hard time nailing down what felt right.  I even took to Google to look for inspirational quotes to see if anything would “speak” to me.  Amazingly enough, one did speak to me and it wasn’t so much something to lift me to new heights but to be more accepting of myself in my own imperfection: 

“Remind yourself that it’s okay not to be perfect” 

How darned simple is that?!  Actually, when you think about it, it’s really not that simple at all.  How many of us spend time beating ourselves up for perceived faults?  You let your kids have too much junk on a day when you came home exhausted, you stumbled on your words during a presentation, your jeans are tighter than you want them to be after the holiday eat-fest that is Christmas…….  I won’t claim to know where men sit in this but we women are so damned hard on ourselves.  We expect ourselves to live up to expectations that aren’t realistic and then criticize ourselves when we don’t reach those goals. 

This year, I want to embrace my imperfection; inside and out!   

I am always the one behind the camera.  I have plenty of pictures of my kids but not many of me with them or, when there is one with me in it, I criticize how I look in it and often will hit “delete”.   So what if there are circles under my eyes or my cheeks are redder (and rounder) than I would like!  My kids see my face every day looking as it does and love me anyway.  It would be sad if they looked through the pictures after I’m gone and don’t have very many to remember me by just because I didn’t feel that I looked perfect. 

Let's start with this one (even after many glasses of wine)

Would I like to lose weight?  Of course.  Do I have the impulse control to go on an all-out self-depriving diet to accomplish this?  Realistically…..no.  I’ve always felt that it is all or nothing as far as food goes and, when I do try to diet, beat myself up when I cave in and eat something I shouldn’t.  This takes me completely off the rails.  The thing that I am slowly coming to realize is that no diet has to be perfect in order to be healthy.  Slipping into the realm of junk here and there is not the end of the world as long as you are also making a lot of healthy choices.  So I am going to try to make good choices most of the time and not worry about those times that the chips call my name. 

I am not a perfect parent and have often put myself through guilt-trips when I felt that I have not lived up to expectations.  There are days when their meals aren't as balanced as they should be.  There are days when my nerves are frayed and I've snapped at them.  Do these things make me a bad mom?  No, they make me a human one and humans are not perfect.  My kids are smart, happy, well-mannered and well-adjusted all without a perfect mom.  That's something to be proud of.

So, this year, I will stand tall and be happy with my imperfect self.  This, my friends, is probably the best stress buster there is.

Kat