Imperfect or Imperfectly Perfect?

It’s a work in progress

I’m sure you are well aware of the Japanese art: kintsugi. It basically means ‘to join with gold’. It all began with a 15th century military ruler who, after breaking his favourite tea bowl, decided to send it away to be repaired. I mean, I can totally relate to that, you? When it arrived back he was not impressed with the way it had been fixed, but his love for this tea bowl was so great (again, totally relate!), that he asked someone local to him, a craftsman skilled in the art of fixing broken pottery, to find a better way of repairing it. Rather than trying to hide the cracks in the bowl, this craftsman instead accentuated the brokeness by filling the cracks with gold laquer.

It’s a beautiful concept, and one that has become a popular mindset amongst certain types on the internet. So too the term waba sabi, which means embracing imperfection.

To embrace imperfection is important, there’s no doubt about it in my mind, but perhaps a better way of looking at life is to challenge what it is that our mind deems to be perfect.

Growing up I felt far, far, far from perfect. My teen years conveniently coincided with the first supermodel era -Elle McPherson, Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and the like. I don’t think this helped. I couldn’t name that many models nowadays so that tells you how obsessed I, and my friends, were about these perfect 80s anomalies on every magazine cover we cared to gaze upon.

I spent the next 3 decades thinking I wasn’t the right shape, that I was too big, that I needed to exercise more and eat less. For the majority of my 20s and 30s I weighed around 70 kilos. Even though, at 175 cm tall, I was in the healthy weight range and my BMI was right for my height, and all of the planets aligned in that department, I trashed myself with my own mind. I wasn’t perfect. Big deal! But it was a big deal back then, it felt huge and it consumed my thoughts at times.

I wasn’t the only one. Every female I knew had the same thoughts around their own bodies. It was the norm to trash the way we looked and to focus on the imperfections we saw with our own eyes. It was almost a game, a fun thing to do with a glass of wine and a rice cake topped with low fat cottage cheese (do you remember those days?).

At 52, I am close to being the heaviest I’ve ever been. I have been a little heavier, but let’s just say I am far, far, far from the 70 kilo, much younger woman that I once was. Do I now see how ridiculous my thinking was back then? Well, yes, I most definitely do. Would I chose to go back to that mindset but have the body I once had? Hmmmm, that is a difficult one to answer, because, you see, I still have those thoughts of perfection and what that looks like, and although the bar has most definitely moved, so too has my age, and with that comes more and more imperfection - the sort that I didn’t need to deal with back then - the hormone changes, the wrinkles, the stiff joints, the brain fog, the possibility that my eyes might not be what they used to be. The realities of getting older. The realities of facing further imperfection.

The saddest thing for me is knowing that every one of you reading this, in some way, has felt exactly the same. Perhaps you still feel it to varying degrees.

What on earth does any of this have to do with the photo I shared up there?

Well, imperfection.

See, now we have an epidemic where not only our bodies need to be a certain way but so too do our homes, our gardens, our children, our partners, our careers, our pay packets, our cars, our shopping trolleys for goodness sake!

To counteract this, some of us who are fairly regular users of social media, have taken to the ‘imperfect is OK’ ideaology, and spout off words like waba sabi, and act like we are content to share the imperfect parts of our existence on tiny squares of a phone screen. We might even slip and add: Oooh, mind the weeds in this photo with a little shame induced emoji that resembles prayer hands or a face palm or my favourite, the face hiding one.

Sadly there’s often a holier than though air about this whole ‘imperfect’ facade, which is a rather sickening thought, and one I am continually faced with in my own photography and glimpses of life on social media, because at the end of the day, that photo up there, is one I would not normally share.

How ludicrous it all is.

Let’s dissect the phot, just a little.

You see this little section of my home is probably the most used, favourite tiny corner of my kitchen. Every day I make my tea here, I look out of the window, to the roses and fairy wrens, take a deep breath as I break from my work sitting at a computer screen, and I boil the jug. The ritual begins: choose from my favourite cup from the collection that are not currently in the dishwasher; add a ….. I’m going to say it …gulp … tea bag, (heaven forbid); another gulp … and one teaspoon of sugar or honey; pour the water; let it sit for a few minutes; add some milk; stir; and cup that warm mug of goodness in my hands, instantly feeling the comfort and soothing balm of it all.

If I let my hand rest on the bench top, I can be easily transported back to the moments when I was choosing this kitchen. To the joy of creating a new home and to the privilege I have had my entire life.

Sometimes I just want to capture those moment, with a snap on my phone. A snap, let’s be real, 20 snaps. And that, right there is a sign that my desires for perfection are not yet a thing of the past.

You won’t see many photos of this particular spot in my kitchen on my website, or Instagram or anywhere public. You won’t see the tired section of bench where the polyurothene has rubbed away and the raw timber protrudes. You won’t see the burn marks from a stove top mishap. You won’t see the view from that southern window, which reveals the tip of my husband’s boat. You won’t see a tea bag dangling from my mug, nor will your see the rough old stainless steel kettle that is quite possibly on its last legs. I won’t be telling you about the sugar I consume, and the fact that I love brewed tea leaves but am often too lazy to make it during the day.

You won’t see it because I still have a lot of work to do on the whole imperfection caper, but I’m working on it. I’m working on seeing the beauty beyond an imperfect bench top, with a cup full of supermarket bought teabag tea, and a crappy old cheapish kettle which has seen better days. Instead, I’m going to choose to look at that delicious morning light pouring in, and be reminded of the beautiful moments I’ve been given in this 12 year old kitchen. The laughs we’ve had here, the fun, the conversations. I’m going to choose to accept that a big part of my tea drinking happens because of Twinings Assam Bold, and that because there is absolutely nothing wrong with that kettle apart from it’s shabby and not so enamel-whistle-style-on-Aga appearance, I will not replace it until I must. And I will also be reminded that much of what I’ve just rambled about is in my own head and not what you’ve even noticed in this photo.

Agh, I still have so much work to do with this imperfection gig, but know that working on it I am. I must.

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The Tea + Toast Club subscription …

The Bloom Tea + Toast Box has been arriving in subscriber’s mailboxes over the past week and it’s been delightful to open messages in my email and find stories on Instagram of their joy in receiving it.

The doors are now closed for Tea + Toast Club subscriptions. There will be a time when more will become available, but for now, I am at full capacity and enjoying curating these boxes for the gorgeous humans who currently subscribe.

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The Lovely Letters Project …

If you’d like to join in on our monthly snail mail exchange and get back into the loveliness that is writing and receiving letters, then please always know that you are very welcome to join The Lovely Letters Project. it really is a gorgeous group of letter writing women.

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look at her with dog in one hand, maggie in the other;)

This past week, over at Dear Nan, I shared a letter about when my Nan and Grandpa first met. Complete spoiler, it’s not romantic, not in the slightest;)

I will also be sharing another favourite recipe from Nan’s recipe books and some lovely old photos from her wedding album.

If you haven’t subscribed to Dear Nan but you’d like to check it out, you are more than welcome to use your ‘free read’ option to check it out. There are multiple posts each month, plus a piece of downloadable writing paper in a very Nanna-ish design which I know she would have adored. (A big thank you to Lew for creating the illustrations).

To read the free stuff, you’ll need to make sure you are subscribed to this Betty Mae Wrote newsletter:

If you’d like to jump right in and subscribe to Dear Nan, you can do that here:

Okey doke, well I think you’ve heard enough from me for one day. May your week ahead be a lovely one and I look forward to connecting with you somewhere around the traps.

Oh, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on imperfection and the like. There’s a conversation to be had here, most definitely there is.

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