Pink Camellia

The other day I came across a product called “Conception Essence.” It’s a combination of flower and gem essences to facilitate conception. Pink Camellia was listed as follows: “nurtures the mothering spirit within all women, especially where their own mothering experience may have been lacking. Helping to heal the spirit of the lost mother within, Pink Camellia brings wholeness and readiness to mother a new life and helps to remove the need to be perfect in order to be loved.”

Something I have struggled with is that feeling that I must be perfect in order to be loved. Whether it means perfectly thin, perfectly organized, perfectly calm and even-tempered, or whatever other aspect of perfection I feel that I am lacking at the moment. I know that parenting twins is difficult. Most people don’t ask for it. So I feel as if I ought to be perfect before I do ask.

Somehow, in my mind, the concept of twins is tied to perfection: yin and yang, the perfect balance, somehow the perfect life.

In my mind, I pictured living in a cute little house in one of the most beautiful villages in France, with a little garden and chickens and goats (all enclosed by neat white picket fences), and giving birth to twins at home in the water, with my hypnobirthing music playing. It’s an idealistic vision. I am an idealistic person, and I work hard to make my ideals into reality.

They usually turn out as beautiful as I imagine, although somehow the only imperfect ingredient seems to be myself.