The Perfection in the Imperfection

I remember as a child, just wanting to be perfect. God if I can just be perfect, I can be loveable, I will be wanted. I won’t feel all this pain. It hurts so much God. Please God, help me to be perfect. This was my prayer. Of course, I had no idea how prayer worked, so my child’s mind decided that I wasn’t perfect enough yet to have my prayer answered. In this way, my addiction to perfection unconsciously took control of my life. 

What has been the cost of being addicted to perfection? The cost was not being fully engaged in life. I have ‘lived’ a life unlived in so many ways. The cost was not being my authentic self, not allowing myself to be imperfect and be loved. The cost was separation. In trying to be so perfect I shut people out of my life and shut out love. I wasn’t perfect enough to be loved. The cost was not using my gifts to truly serve those who could have benefited from them. I was waiting to perfect them to share them. The cost was being a prisoner in my own story of what I thought I needed to be in order to be wanted, valued, needed, accepted, supported, successful and to live an empowered life. One of my teachers says, “waiting is not creating” and he is so right. While I was stuck in my addiction to perfection, I couldn’t create because I didn’t feel my creation would be perfect enough. When I failed to be successful, that deepened the addiction. I needed to be more perfect to be successful. The greatest cost was not allowing myself to be human and to enjoy the experience of being fully human. All I could see was the imperfection in humanity. I rejected my humanity. I walked away from endless opportunities that had the potential to lead to incredible things. I believed I wasn’t perfect enough to embrace those opportunities. I kept myself small, believing if I could see perfection in some small area of my life then that meant I was achieving perfection. The cost was depleting my energy field to maintain that perfection. The cost was my health and wellbeing.

The waking up process to acknowledge my addiction to perfection and all the spin off addictions, was a long process. The first book that I read was Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman. It was a psychological study and with my love of psychology and mythology, I was drawn in and as a result, my story of perfection developed a crack. Over the years as my awareness grew, the crack grew wider and the unsticking process continued. I had no idea that the foundation for self-love was being laid. In 2020, the year of unraveling all that no longer belonged, the last threads of that story unraveled, opening the door to an incredible love of self. I am so in love with my imperfection. I see myself and the world around me through a new lens. In the imperfection is Divine perfection. The perfection was always there. I couldn’t see it because my story of perfection was not in alignment with Divine perfection. Now I see my human imperfection and Divine perfection at the same time. The beauty is beyond what I was capable of seeing through my human perfection lens. Perfection like all addictions is crippling and it takes grit to heal the wound that grows the addiction. I am deeply grateful to be on the other side and living with a new-found freedom.

I am always in awe how changes in my inner world manifest in the outer world. I wear glasses and for a number of years I have sported small frames — as small as I could get to fit my prescription requirements and not compromise my vision, or so I thought. In 2020 as the unraveling was happening, I became aware that I was having to squint to see through my glasses. I booked an eye exam and my prescription had not changed. At first, I was puzzled but then came a revelation with a solution that was so easy. I chose a new pair of frames that support much larger lenses and now I can see. They accommodate my need to have my eyes wide open and drink in the perfection in the imperfection. I see clearly now!