What if YOU decide what perfection is?

Some 20 years ago I went to therapy. Something in me already knew needed to divorce. But I wasn’t there yet.
I went to therapy to understand myself, but ended up talking lots and lots about my parents. It was like there took a lot of time before it was ”my turn.”
Anyways.

After meeting the therapist once a week for more than a year, I left the therapy, with one important insight: “I don’t need to be perfect to have the right to live or to be loved.”

That was so relieving.

But what should I do with this information, this insight. It sort of parked in my mind for some years. I did divorce before next step concerning being perfect dawned on me.

(And I guess I needed the insight, to be able to divorce, because divorcing meant, to me, that broke with the promise I made to myself, never to break up the marriage. I needed to be ”imperfect” to do that.)

The following years I was on ha hunt, or a treasure hunt. I wanted to find out who I was. I did a body therapist training at Osho Risk in Denmark, and that was the best gift I have so far been giving to myself. In that environment I could be me. I was embraced as I, no matter what I had done, or thought.

I remembered things that had happened years back, when people could say to you: ”I don’t recognize you.” And when I started in therapy me husband said: ”I don’t recognize you, you are not the same person I married. I want the other Charlotte back”. And I said: ”But this is me…”

Well.

Some 15 years ago I had a break through. I realized that we human beings are like diamonds or crystals with many facets. If you looked at a person from the front, you would see something, if another person looked from the back, she would see something else. And in our minds, we could reason about who the person was, from our own experiences, belief systems, values etc.

It’s like we look at others from our own colored lenses. We don’t really see them, we see an aspect of them.

And of course this goes for me as well. I am a (slightly) different person to every person meeting me. And I don’t actually know ”who” they see. If I ”agree” with what they see or think.

And what is a perfect version of Charlotte? Who decides that? And how do I measure my perfectness? Suddenly I realized that ”the perfect Charlotte” was a person that my mum would love, accept and embrace. To some extents I had tried to become perfect in my mothers eyes… of course not knowing that is really perfect to her. I tried, and tried and tried.

And then there was a thunder. An inner thunder. And I saw the perfect diamond/crystal explode. It was like the diamond symbolized my idea of perfect (what I had to be like to get my mothers love and attention).

And then I was lying naked, among the debris. I had nothing to protect me. I felt like a newborn. What if I can create my own perfect? And my question was: "Who am I, what is the perfect me?”. It was like I hade to re-invent myself. Or find myself for real. And one of my answers to the question of being perfect is: “Being me”.

And since then that’s part of what I do. Or rather: I’ve decided that we are perfect as we are. And I guess my journey towards self love, got a lot of fuel that day. What if I have the power myself? What if I don’t have to strive for perfection in others eyes?

What is perfection to you?
How can you be kind and gentle towards yourself?

Message from your love warrior