How I Accidently Created My Perfect Life

I know what you are thinking… yeah right you have a perfect life. You would be correct in thinking that because how can anything be perfect as by nature, cycles come and go as the days change and nothing especially the good stuff, lasts forever. I have to start by saying that ‘perfect’ is the closest word to how I feel in my life as it is now. This does not mean that some days are not hard, filled with emotions other than satisfaction, and sometimes I feel like I am failing. Nor does it mean that I have stopped learning, growing, or changing. I mean this in a broad sense that I have created the life I truly love and never thought I could have.

Let me explain…

As I sit here and write the words I have felt go running through my head for weeks on end, I feel a sense of calm. I have just tried to eat a quick lunch that I hoped would be delicious but sadly, it was not and it sits here getting cold next to the keyboard. I instead drink a coffee and get the words off my chest and out of my head before my 7 month old wakes up, which can be at any moment. All of this after a chaotic morning of waking up an almost 3 year old who of course wanted chocolate for breakfast (girl, same…) so cue the breakdown. Then to top it off, realizing I forgot her backpack when dropping her off at day care so here comes the frustration. This is type of morning is not a one off. If you are a parent you know that any given day can be calm and quiet or full of emotion and chaos. I for one wouldn’t change this for the world.

Where I am now in life is the ‘perfect’ place I never knew I wanted but more importantly was one I could have. As you may have gathered, I have two children a 7 month old boy and an almost 3 year old girl. I have been married for 6 years and have been with my spouse for 12 years. Then to top of the household, we have a 4 year old rottweiler. This is what people like to point out as the traditional or ‘nuculear family’, which to me always seemed incredibly boring. If someone would have asked me in my teens to early-20’s if I saw this in my future, I would have laughed and head straight to the beach where I felt like I belonged.

My life has been everything but easy. It has created hard walls that I continuously work to breakdown, brick by brick. A major wall I worked tirelessly to build was surrounding love and family. I come from a severely broken home where I grew up with my mom and older sister, both of whom I do not speak to now (more on that later). Having a family was never something I wanted as I was used to constant rejection and let down from everyone that should have been my biggest supporters. You would think that living in a home with three women would create girl power bonds and a closeness that could transcend the idea of what affectionate, loving, and reliable family bonds are. My experience is just the opposite of this. I was raised in absolute disfunction and emotional neglect (again, more on this later). I was completely shaped by my home life, the words I would hear (or never hear), the silent treatments, the fights, etc. so much that my whole character and thought patterns solidified into an independent and often destructive habit.

I often recall a conversation I had with a favourite teacher upon graduating high school. I told this teacher when they asked what my future plans were. I was excited to share how I was accepted to my dream University and that I could not wait to get my life away from home started. There was a moment where family was brought up and my response was “I will never get married, I will not have children, you will find me living on a beach somewhere else in the world”… boy was I wrong but in the very best way. This thinking is not unique to me, there are many people and more increasingly women, who want to see the world and starting a family is the farthest thought from their mind. For me, I was refusing a family due to a learned lack of trust, need, and want. A dizzying array of questions flooded my thoughts on the topic of relationships and family:

• I learned to be independent and take care of myself at a very young age so how could I find a partner that could do more for me than I could?
• How could I trust someone to be with me forever?
• How could I trust that my forever person would stay with me if we had children?
• How can I bring children into the world when I do not have family to support me?

All of these questions and more, were a constant thought for me until one day my mind was made up and these thoughts with the endless questions disappeared. I was fully committed to me. It was almost like an instant burden was lifted from my shoulders. It meant that I could develop myself as the person I wanted to be. As you may have gathered, my passion was living my best independent life, doing whatever I wanted with my time, money, body. If I was to look back at my late teen – early 20’s and have a vision of what my future would look like, I would see this:

Fast forward to now

Overtime I have learned that sometimes you can be your own cheerleader or your own worst enemy. In the past I was always the latter. Habits and destructive cycles are often hard to break because they provide a comfortability. As I write this now, I know that I will forever work to change myself for the better and accept the past for what it is. Although there is still the part of me that feels broken and hurt, there is a much greater side that feels abundant and ready to take on the world.

Although there is so much in between then and now, I want to focus this post on the now. My perfect life turned out to be creating a stable, loved filled, adventurous home filled with my most favourite people. I have achieved a lot in my life from education, travel, career (all to which I strive for more), but nothing comes close to the family I have made. As I go about my days, I realize that I craved the ‘traditional’ family that I worked so hard to avoid. I would never have known that you can live a life you want with all the joys you crave while having a family to come along with you. Life to me is about the little moments that create lifetime memories. It’s about the balance between good and bad, highs and lows, ying and yang.

Traditional to me was always boring with a 9-5 life filled with struggles and boring conversations and stagnant days. What I have learned over the last three years alone is the ‘traditional’ is what you make it to be when you put a family first. We are often showed that by putting family first (especially for women) that you have to forget your individuality, interests, and needs. I can tell you that I have developed more creatively, passionately, and spiritually in this short time then ever before. I see the world from the perspective of little eyes and hands who want to discover the world around them. I connect to nature as much as possible and create hobbies around it (more on this later if you stick with me). I work hard to live in the moment which has helped me significantly in managing emotions. I search deep within me pull out what I truly need and want while simultaneously holding up the needs of others. This is my new traditional. If I was to envision my now and my future, it would look something like this:

Now, when I think about what my ‘perfect’ life it is not just me in the picture. I see three sets of eyes staring back at me wanting to take my hand and come with me through the good and bad and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world… it is my perfect.