Tomorrow I leave on a wedding road trip. My oldest son will be married by this time next week. After a day of "doing around", I'm finally getting a chance to settle down and realize.... The time has come. Oddly enough, my mind isn't focused on his life changing decision, it's focused on hers. I married at 18 and although I felt like I knew everything.... I knew nothing. What do I know now, that I wished I'd known then? For One, I didn't know that women aren't very honest people. Not only are we not honest with others, we aren't honest with ourselves. Women are taught at a very early age, to hide our flaws because it's not okay to be imperfect. I honestly don't think men have the same pressure to be perfect like women do; that's why they scratch, belch and fart without shame... Because it's okay. The Bloggess is one of my favorite writers for a variety of reasons. The main reason I love to read her stuff, is because she has taken her warped flaws, embraced them and put them out there for the world to see. In return, women have embraced her and all of her flaws because it makes them feel more normal. Women have a deep need, to know it's okay to be imperfect. Sometimes when I'm sitting with a group of women chatting about everyday normal stuff like housework, child rearing, money management, hygeine or whatever the hot topic of the day is... I'll think to myself.... "Gosh! I'm just a failure on every level!" I'm constently letting my housework slide because I'm into a good book, or a nap just sounds way more fun than mopping the floor. My most steadfast parenting rule is "Don't bring company home without warning". I'll blow a whole months budget on a really cute outfit and not even feel entirely bad about it, and yeah, at this very moment I'm comptemplating skipping giving myself a pedicure because I'm just so dang tired. I'm a mess! 100%, 79 shades of imperfect and only once in a while do I really feel terrible about being so. So, if I could give my daughter-in-law advice I wish I'd had when I was young it would be this.... Embrace yourself including the flaws and save the mask for Halloween. People around you need to know who you are, not who you wish you were. When the women in your life see you embracing the warped part of yourself, it makes them feel more normal. Sure, they will still judge you, talk about you when you're not around, and totally compare how their flaws aren't as bad as your flaws, but that's just because they aren't being honest with themselves, and because it's so dang hard to see looking through a mask that doesn't fit them very well. Be gentle with yourself, my son isn't marrying you because he thinks you are a perfect person.... He is marrying you because he knows you are the perfect person for him. Looking back on a life of trying to keep up with the perfect perception of who I should be, is a sham and something I wish I had known way back in the day. Now when I'm tempted to compare myself to the masks of others, I have to stop myself because, now I know they just haven't learned to embrace the flaws they hide behind their masks.... I wish all women knew the freedom of not living up to something that isn't really there to begin with. Our lives would be so much more enjoyable if we could simply have permission... To be.
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