Tiny Buddha

Author: Jennifer Boykin

  • I Don’t Have to Be Perfect: It’s the Leap That Counts

    I Don’t Have to Be Perfect: It’s the Leap That Counts

    “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” ~Proverb

    I’m a “recovering perfectionist.”

    I make perfect plans. At times, when I’m really working on my plans, I forget to live my actual life. Because I’m planning. Perfectly.

    I had my first strategic plan when I was ten.

    “Be a really, really good girl. Then, when you are sixteen, borrow the car and say that you are going to Drug Fair to buy hairspray. Instead, drive the fifteen minutes to your daddy’s house so that he’ll want you back.”

    A year later I had to revise my first strategic plan. My alcoholic father died.

    Here was the second plan:

    “Now you’re all alone.” (Which wasn’t true, by the way. It just felt that way. Anyway, back to the plan.) “Now you’re all alone. Be perfect.”

    In the first plan, I just had to be “good” to be rescued. In the second one, there was no rescue.

    I needed to be perfect.

    (Perfectionism Myth #1 Perfection will keep you safe.)

    That plan ‘worked’ for a while. I had started playing the flute the year my father died. My great grandmother told me not to cry and upset my mother. That was okay. Perfect people don’t cry.

    (Perfectionism Myth #2:  Perfection is a way to manage hard feelings.)

    Perfect people practice. (more…)

  • Will You Get Bitter or Better?

    Will You Get Bitter or Better?

    “Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb

    I am a member of a mercifully small subset of society. I am the mother of a dead child.

    Twenty years ago, my daughter Grace—my first child, my only girl—was born prematurely and died 32-minutes later. As I write this, I am astonished that it has been twenty years since I met my daughter for the only time.

    Time stopped for me when Grace took her last little breath. And I was certain that my life could never start again. 

    I was wrong.

    Here’s what made all the difference in my healing:

    Over time, I learned to bless the thorns in my life. I began to see that the thorn and rose define one another. Since, one cannot exist without the other, we can only enjoy the rose when we embrace the thorn.

    As a society, though, we make healing from loss very difficult. We unintentionally tell each other lies about suffering and the healing process.

    One of those lies is that “Time heals all wounds.”

    If time healed all wounds, why do so many people suffer their entire lives from things that happened decades ago?

    As one of the bereavement experts I studied explained, it’s not “time” that heals all wounds. It’s hard work. And hard work takes time.

    Here is some of the hard work of healing: (more…)