Perfectly imperfect
As I’ve been pulling my website together over the past week, I realised I needed to have my first blog post ready for it.
My thinking raced along the well-worn tracks of overthinking – what sort of post? Should it be informative? Should it introduce me? Should it be an account of my process of building my website? What if I didn’t choose the best idea, and as a result, people didn’t read any of my posts ever again?
I started to get tangled up in all the possibilities, and that’s when it came to me. This first post, most fittingly, should be a testament to my tortured path to this website. It has been a long, juddering and fractured path.
That mythical creature
I don’t even know when I started working on the mythical (and unpublished) creature that has been ‘my website’. Perhaps 2014, 2015? Definitely long enough ago to be very embarrassing. Except, I’m choosing to not be embarrassed.
My website’s evolution has tracked along with mine. As I’ve become more spiritual in my life and my work, versions of my website began to haltingly reflect that. And that really scared me. It felt like I was going too public, putting down in print that which could be traced back to me. People would hold me to what I said about myself and my work, and then I couldn’t hide anymore.
So I continued hiding; pretending to myself that my website would be finished any time now. For a few more years.
Shifting the self-sabotage
And then something changed. Maybe a lot of things changed. I came close to burn-out last year due to a heavy case-study load that I made heavier with my resistance. I experienced some health issues that made me sit up and realise life isn’t for wasting. I realised I have so much to offer my potential clients, so much new work that I’m eager to share, and my resistance to my website is keeping my message from reaching people. Honestly, I think I’d just had enough of sabotaging myself.
I decided last week that my website would go live this week. And it would most definitely, quite consciously, and unmistakably, be NOT perfect. I realised by giving myself permission to go live with a quite imperfect website, I would not only be getting my message out, but I would be showing myself a great deal of self-love. A great deal.
Begin making a new choice
My perfectionism has hobbled and muffled me my whole life. It has stressed me out, held me back, squashed joy. It has certainly kept me from accomplishing all I’ve been capable of. And that’s fine; the past is past. I can witness it with love, hold myself with love, and begin making a new choice. Because that’s the power, the beauty, the truth of life. In each moment, we can always make a new choice.
So, I’m making my new choice. And with that new and liberating choice, I present you with my new website. Real, live, and gloriously imperfect. Perfect. x
Kathy ❤️
I am totally identifying with everything you have said. Well done you for pushing through the fear and ego to set yourself free.
It’s is a perfectly imperfect website and it’s all yours. Be proud 😊
Thankyou for sharing.
Thank you, Vicky! I am so proud, for my website and for my process. It feels so good to take a big step like this forward, in a way that feels so authentic.
A quote hanging on my wall:
If we waited till conditions were perfect,
we would never begin anything.
My theory:
Perfection is overrated, and leaves no room for growth, and isn’t that what this journey is all about?
May I share with you, that Kathy is my older sister…
And younger sisters would love to, finally, once and for all, put their older sisters under the bus, am I right?!?! …How ’bout an “I told you so!”?!?
No better place than a blog!!….
Well…I honestly, cannot say enough about Kathy’s determination as a strong, independent and courageous woman!
I have admired her tenacity every step of the way.
All of her life’s circumstances have propelled her to access the drive she has within herself…the very drive that has led her through this journey of life and to where she is today! ….Helping so many other women along the way, who desperately need that encouragement to be real with themselves, forgiving with themselves, and loving themselves.
I am so proud to call you my sister.
You are a role model to women of all ages.
You have led a life, like most of us, sprinkled with hardship and disappointments, amidst the joys and successes.
Yet, you have CHOSEN to take those hardships and adversities..
…owning, rather than running from them, and then allowing yourself
grace and love…to learn and grow from them.
You are a beautiful human being.
You bless the lives of many.
Congratulations on this long awaited website!
I think it’s perfect, like you, just the way it is!
Thank you, dear sister; that’s beautiful. ❤️