dear martha,

do not worry. this is not another letter expressing disappointment in your ethics pertaining to the world of finances. your time in the big house actually scored you many points in  my book, not because i’m a fan of insider trading, but because it was refreshing to see that you are not perfect. i appreciate your post-incarceration humility and humor.

you and i share a love for cooking crafting, wellness, and gardening (though you are on your own in the home-cleaning arena) so i subscribe to your magazine for inspiration. i am writing to discuss the calendar that appears at the beginning of every issue and is a prominent feature on your website. it is my understanding that your readers are to use your plans for the month to tailor our own, equally lofty ideations. the problem is, on “private yoga lesson” day, i walked out the door to meet my private yoga teacher and suddenly realized that i don’t have one of those. i had similar experiences on “prune espaliered apple trees” day, “get horses vaccinated” day, and “insert supports in peony garden” day.

sure, you might say that i could still rotate and flip my mattresses, bake your mother’s babka, host an egg hunt for family and friends, and remove my storm windows but doesn’t this all seem a bit ambitious for the month of april?

i’m actually not suggesting that you change the content of this calendar feature or anything else about your magazine and related endeavors. i truly think that you make this world a more creative place. the problem is that, in the process, your gusto and success make the rest of us feel like schmucks.

in my opinion, this problem could be easily solved with a simple name change on your part. instead of calling your magazine and related endeavors “martha stewart,” which insinuates that all this cooking, crafting, wellness, gardening, and home-making craziness can be done well by one person, why don’t you change the name on everything to “martha stewart and her bazillion employees, assistants, and trainers.” that way, we could all be reminded from the outset that you, as we have come to know you, are not A PERSON but AN ENTERPRISE.

best wishes to you and your entourage as you fill your birdbaths, host galas in the barn, and switch from flannel to percale sheets next month.

your faithful reader,

mary allison

[pictures in this post are from mediabistro.com and ceoworld.biz.]

i spent a large portion of my young adult years convinced that the object of life is to be perfect. since i am a minister, some of this was steeped in what i thought was the perfection of jesus. in the area of my spiritual life, i was relieved to learn that the word “pefect” in greek really means “whole.” thank goodness!

but some of my drive for perfection was cultural and was fed by the sleek women’s bodies in style magazines, the pants-suit warriors hammering through the glass ceiling, and finally, the mothers who seemed to float along on lofty platitudes pertaining to breast-feeding, tv-watching, organic-eating, penny-pinching, floor-time playing, and the like. i am strangely grateful that my resolve for perfection died (for the most part) long before i became a mother, myself. it was a painful death, mind you, complete with anxiety attacks and some really good therapy.

but in my experience, we don’t move from perfectionist tendencies to normalcy all at once. there are stages involved, and stage one frequently swings the pendulum in the complete opposite direction. what was once an ugly competition to modal impossible ideals becomes an equally ugly competition to denounce them. in other words, the “i suck contest” begins, and in the context of motherhood, it usually goes something like this:

mother 1: “i haven’t showered in two days.”

mother 2: “oh, please. i haven’t showered in two weeks.”

mother 1: “well, my children watched six hours of pbs today.”

mother 2: “cry me a river. my children watched seven hours of dora today, and my son speaks only in spanglish.”

these conversations are rampant, partly because they are funny and easy. i have participated enthusiastically in these “i suck contexts” because the other common ways in which moms frequently commune (through defending or bragging) are truly abysmal. i am happy to be the very picture of imperfection all day long if the only other alternative is depleting fellow mothers or feeling depleted myself.

but surely there are healthier ways for mothers to be together! there has got to be a way for moms to come clean (pardon the pun) about the daily struggle for balance and sanity without all of this self-deprecating language. this is so difficult when language like this is popping up everywhere and is frequently opening pathways of connection between us. how can we embrace the “i suck contest” for its value and then move beyond it into something deeper and more life-giving?

cognitive behavioral therapists would say that we have to modify our thoughts and language first, and changes in our behavior will follow. so, to that end, i’ll go first.

my name is mary allison. i’m a mother. i am not perfect, nor do i suck.

who’s with me?