This is my new mantra. In the course of coming to understand myself this year (and, if you asked my counsellor, all of last year too, although chaos and poor mental health had stolen 2022 from me as a whole) I have realised that I am a perfectionist.

I have read a lot of parenting books in the last 12 months in my committed quest to better my mothering (I hugely recommend How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber & Raising Girls Who Like Themselves by Christopher Scanlon and Kasey Edwards) and have been comforted by how certain themes have been addressed in them all. Perfectionism is one of them. Deemed, it seems as a desirable trait (who hasn’t cited their perfectionism in a job interview?) but it is, as I am still learning, entirely unobtainable.

I have learnt that I am a perfectionist as a direct response to the fact that I have always been imperfect. With feet that will trip me up, with legs that ache and twist. With hands that aren’t always able to translate the instructions that my brain tries to transmit when I make a sandwich or carry a cup of tea.

My mother carried the burden of raising and protecting her disabled daughter alone. She learnt to tell me that “I couldn’t….” because she was concerned I would hurt myself if any part of my body didn’t “get” the messages I willed them. I was never allowed to make my own food. I was never allowed to play in the street with the other neighbourhood kids. I learnt I was delicate, vulnerable, incapable. That is a word I have always struggled with because it was always encompassed my whole view of myself.

But since Mum’s death, since therapy and bringing my broken halves (hurt child, functioning adult) together, I know that every choice she made, however they have impacted me, were the culmination of the best she knew how to do at the time she was required to do it. In truth, is that not all any parent can claim to be, or have at their disposal? I have so much empathy for her now that I would so love to share with her. Honestly, I don’t know if she would allow that, because I am the child and because I don’t know if she would want to admit she did not do all she wished she could, because it would be painful to admit you had not, that you can not do it all.

I have always felt that I would be able to do it all if only I were “better” or “stronger” or… more. Somehow. But I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that the fallicy is not me nor my adult self as she emerges cautiously. It is with the idea, the pressure to be perfect. I will never reach it, no-one can. So what use is it to kill myself, literally as well as metaphorically trying to reach it? I finally know I deserve more than that.

And so, as part of my commitment to teaching my girls the same, I am trying to allow more time for everything. More time means less stress. Some is better than none. So if we’re late to a scheduled activity, it’s better to be there for a while rather than not at all in a shriek of stress right? Thankfully, Squidge has taken the message on fantastically, repeating it back to me as a calming measure when she can see I am trying to achieve too much.

And now I am perfectly imperfect. And my wonderful girl can see that that is just fine.