I’ve been thinking a lot about personality this year, or character perhaps, or whatever it is that is essential and unique in each of us. How important it is to be true to that core of our being that is unlike any other. This is how we were made and who we are meant to be.

I was pondering that while sitting out in the playhouse in our back yard drinking coffee. Well, actually, it was pond water mixed with a scoop of sand, but lovingly prepared by my three year old girl, as I visited her toy kitchen.

I was looking out the playhouse door at our wild garden, with all it’s colourful rotting leaves and plants in various stages of fall transition, and thinking how lucky I am to have such interesting things to look at, ever changing. How much better like it than a perfectly manicured lawn, that looks exactly the same all year.

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to embrace our wild garden, and not feel the need to crop it and mow it and trim it until it matches surrounding lawns with golf-course-like precision.

How many of us feel the pressure to conform our personalities to this manicured model? How often are we willing to betray our selves for the sake of appearances, for the sake of fitting in?

How much more alive would we be if we didn’t? If we could really accept and embrace who we are, and know that to be true to ourselves is the best way to be beautiful?

It is a good thing to be comfortable in our own skin, even of it means other people might think we’re a little (or totally) crazy. Life’s more interesting when you’re weird!

I think when we can stand firmly where we are, confident in being ourselves, that we can begin to move forward to grow even better.

We all want to improve ourselves, and struggle with feeling inadequate at times, especially as mothers. But before we can improve effectively, we need to accept where we are, and be ok with it.

Being imperfect is really ok. We all are; no matter how much we think others have it more together than we do, everyone struggles.

So whatever kind of garden you like, whether wild or orderly, colourful or clean looking, live in it and enjoy it, no matter what the neighbour’s lawn looks like. Being you is best for you, and what’s best for them doesn’t really matter.