International Women’s Day: the freedom not to be perfect

Today is International Women’s Day, and I’m writing this from the dining table while listening to Radio 3 Unwind. I’m sitting down with my laptop and a going-cold cup of tea, after Virginia Woolf’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own popped into my head. In it, she reflects that for a woman to write fiction, she needed two things: money and a room of her own (ideally with a door that closes). What she really meant, perhaps, was time to think and the freedom to exist inside her own mind.

When Woolf wrote that essay in the early twentieth century, women’s lives looked very different. Women didn’t have the vote, couldn’t easily own property, had limited access to higher education and were expected by society (and husbands) to serve said husbands, raise children and remain financially dependent. There was very little room to build independent lives or creative work - writing itself had to be squeezed into the margins of domestic life.

So, sitting here this evening, laptop open and tea slowly going cold, I feel a strong mix of gratitude and perspective. I feel fortunate I have multiple rooms of my own. Today I have chosen to write in the kitchen (I’ve got a pie in the oven; if I am not nearby, I risk dinner burning, even with the timer). In front of me lies a scribbled chapter outline that looks a tad chaotic. It makes sense to me, though, and good job ‘cause it’s a very important part of the book.

Historically speaking, this all represents the fact that I have the space to think and write, and edit and ponder. And write some more.

I’m writing Imperfectly Human, a book about perfectionism and people pleasing. The book explores the unspoken and/or misunderstood exhaustion many of us feel from trying to get everything right. Earlier today, between rereading my notes and staring at a sentence that refused to behave, something clicked. It wasn’t a dramatic breakthrough, rather a thought that didn’t know how to stop lingering, becoming lingerless.

I was working on a chapter about the word perfect itself. Etymologically speaking, the word comes from the Latin perficere, meaning to finish or to complete. It’s not defined by flawlessness or being perfectly polished. It doesn’t give a hoot about whether it’s Instagram-grid worthy. It simply means, done. Finito. Complete. Whole!

This is somewhat revealing and relieving at the same time. The word perfect is mis/understood by all of us to mean something impossible: a life without dents, doubts, awkward moments, or emotional turbulence. An individual who always gets things right and manages to move through life looking composed, certain and confident.

But if perfect originally meant complete, something that has been fully lived rather than flawlessly performed, then perhaps we really have been misunderstanding it all along. Sitting here in my Woolf-approved room of one’s own, tapping away at the chapters of this book, I’ve realised something. The goal should never be perfection. Maybe the goal should be preference.

Preference over perfection. What a great title for chapter 11. Thanks, mind.

This chapter (in life and in book!) is centred upon choosing what feels right rather than what looks right. Allowing our lives to be guided by curiosity instead of criticism, compassion instead of comparison. Writing the book the way it wants to be written rather than forcing it into the shape I think it should take (and believe me, it is far from perfect).

Further reflections this evening: today’s International Women’s Day theme is Give to Gain. I’m thinking about how far women have come since Woolf wrote those words. We now have the vote, access to education, careers, financial independence, and, for many of us, the freedom to shape our own lives in ways women a century ago simply couldn’t imagine

And yet, despite all that progress, many women still feel a quiet pressure to be perfect. The perfect partner, the perfect mother, the perfect professional, the perfectly healed and emotionally balanced version of ourselves who somehow manages to juggle everything with grace and a forced smile.

Maybe one of the greatest freedoms we need to remind ourselves that we have gained is the permission NOT TO BE PERFECT.

We are allowed to be authentic. We are permitted to change our minds. We can absolutely feel uncertainty and anger. There is no doubt about it, we can choose to build lives that reflect who we actually are rather than who we/others think we should be.

A shout out to all the wonderful, imperfectly perfect women who have inspired me to make some bloody good (not perfect) progress on Chapter 11 this evening.

With preference over perfection,

Chelsea x