I sat at the dining room table with Mom’s big black laptop and the Estates for Dummies book. The window air conditioner unit could not keep up with the rising heat. Paperwork files wilted with the humidity. The trauma, unexpected loss, and grief that accompanied the deaths of Mom and Dad picked at the threads stitching me together. I felt myself fraying at the edges.

The estate attorney informed me that we would need to open two separate estates. A novice to the probate process, I could not comprehend two probates. The information and timetable felt insurmountable.

My littlest self quivered in my stomach. She wanted to melt into a puddle of tears. My perfectionist part, who’s about thirteen and believed she could conquer the world or at the very least keep me safe, assessed the situation. She flipped through the Estate for Dummies book and surveyed the stacks of papers and files. She decided that we had no time for tears. She shushed my littlest me. She commanded me to move. Time to get started.

I logged on to the MyCase client portal. Perfectionism guided my fingers across the keyboard.
The password box shook its head no. The client portal taunted me.

I breathed in through my nose and wiggled my toes. I am a self-professed technology neophyte. My threat response activates when I look at a new platform. I reentered the password and selected the Documents tab.

Today, I faced the challenge of deciphering the client portal while providing the estate attorney with a collection of documents. As I scanned and uploaded bank statements to the portal, the seams of my executive functioning started to rip.

Perfectionism pushed me forward. Keep going. You can’t stop. You have to keep going. Dad died over two months ago, so you’re already late with this stuff.

Frustration entered as the threads of my executive functioning continued to unravel along the seam of my mind. The online portal froze mid-upload. Self-righteous rage surged and spewed venom in my brain. I hate computers and online portals and the whole process. Why doesn’t anyone get how hard this is? Don’t any of these people know anything about grief?

Perfectionism stepped in again. How about a break? Maybe a walk? You need to get it together. Keep it together.

I shoved my feet into my sneakers, stomped down the back steps, and paced up and down the back alley behind our brick rowhouse. I shook my arms furiously over my head. Mid-shake, I noticed the Turkey Hill market at the end of the alley. Perfectionism offered me a carrot. A little treat and change of scenery would do me some good.

I treated myself to a cup of coffee with French vanilla creamer. I walked to the register and handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill. She handed me two dollars and coins. I didn’t understand. The grief, overwhelm, and frustration ripped the remaining threads inside my brain.

“I think I handed you a twenty,” I said. My voice was harsh and crisp.

“You handed me a five, ma’am,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure I handed you a twenty,” I said.

“No, ma’am. You handed me a five.”

My body shook. Through gritted teeth, I said, “I’m pretty sure I handed you a twenty.” I shoved my fist in the pocket of my jean shorts. Something crinkled between my fingers. I exhumed a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. I looked up at the cashier and met her gaze. “I am so, so sorry. I have had the worst year. I’m not normally like this…”

“It’s okay ma’am.”

“No. No. It’s not okay…”

As I walked home, I chastised myself. Just because you’re having a hard time doesn’t give you the right to take it out on others.

I called a friend. “Hey, do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure, Meg, what is it?” Liz asked.

“I’m having the worst morning. I am so completely overwhelmed with all this estate shit…it’s never-ending. All I want is someone, anyone, to tell me what to do. Give me a list. Something. Anything. Anyway, then there’s the computer stuff. I uploaded the papers. The computer froze. I couldn’t take it so I walked to Turkey Hill and was like totally awful to the cashier. I actually accused her of not giving me the right change. And my money was in my pocket all along.”

“Oh, Meg. I’m so sorry. I get it.”

“But Liz, it was awful. I was awful. I’m not like that. Except I was. I am. I don’t know.”

“Give yourself a break, Meg. You just lost your mom and your dad. You’re so hard on yourself.”

We said goodbye.

Give yourself a break. Be less hard on yourself. Offer yourself some compassion. None of these suggestions are new to me. I spent years altering the designs of my life. I attempted to remove and replace the threads of harshness and perfectionism. That afternoon, all the advice to be self-compassionate sounded harsh. Honoring perfectionism suddenly felt like the kindest act. Somehow, honoring the threads of harshness and perfectionism felt liberating and healing.

A vivid memory from the autumn of 2015 appeared. It was an early Tuesday morning. At the time, I juggled part-time ministry, bookkeeping for my dad’s fastener business, and my first semester in a post-graduate certificate program in marriage and family therapy.

Mom and I sat in my parents’ sunroom and sipped coffee. The autumn leaves scratched the glass of the skylight. The gas fireplace warmed the cool air. Mom nestled in her favorite spot, the recliner beside the fireplace. She was still in her fuzzy red bathrobe—the one I’m wearing now as I write. Pepper, the calico cat, curled up in Mom’s lap.

I sat on the green and blue striped love seat across from Mom. I sipped my coffee and winced. My parents brewed their dark roast so strong it could nearly bend a spoon. This ritual of connection with coffee and conversation filled me up before sitting down to the facts and figures of bookkeeping for Dad’s fastener business. The end of the year approached. The end of my second year of bookkeeping for my dad’s business. The end of my first semester pursuing a post-graduate certificate in marriage and family therapy. The end of hiding parts of myself that I feared sharing.

“How’s school going, Honey?” Mom asked.

I gulped. My littlest me buzzed in my stomach. Did I dare risk sharing?

“I need to write a final paper on my primary introject…basically an unconscious belief that I have. Something that’s inherited. A belief that lives inside.”

I breathed deeply and swallowed. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Did I risk sharing more?

“Mine is not good enough,” I said.

The words hung in the air for a moment. I feared defensiveness or deflection or justification.

I prepared to duck. I wanted to curl up in a ball, just like Pepper.

Mom’s eyes grew large and softened. Her eyes welled with tears. Her hand shook as coffee sloshed over the edge of her mug.

“That’s mine too. I’m so sorry. You got that from me,” Mom said.

Our eyes held the gaze. So much said between us with no words. Tears slowly filled my eyes.

I yearned to return to this moment or one of our countless morning coffees. I wanted to hear her tell the stories of surviving in the corporate world. I longed to let her know that I understood how perfectionism was not only a painful legacy but a protection against the harshness of our society’s systems.

The first December after Mom died, I received my wish. Mom appeared to me in a dream. She was younger than when she died. She appeared in her early fifties. Her big, broad smile beamed. She wore jeans and a subtle holiday sweater. Her pants pocket overflowed with half-used Kleenex and a small tub of Blistex.

We met at some kind of coffee shop like a heavenly Starbucks. The shop was warm and cozy. There was the gentle hum of other conversations. The background sounds and people in the dream were soft and blurred, like in an impressionist painting. I saw her across the coffee shop and waved. We hugged. I nestled my head on the top of her shoulder. I had hugged my mother countless times so casually. This hugging felt different. My body attempted to imprint each felt sense so I could call it up on cold winter nights.

Mom and I sat across from one another at a wooden oak table with solid chairs.

“I miss you so much, Mom.”

She reached over and held my hand. “I know you do, Sweetie. I’m sorry it was so sudden. That Daddy and I didn’t leave things in better shape. I’m so sorry that this is so hard. I’m sorry for so many things. Daddy and I didn’t want to…”

Her voice trailed off. A lump formed in my throat. Hallmark Christmas movie tears flowed down my cheeks. My head bobbed up and down.

Mom squeezed my hand gently.

I looked up, and our eyes met. I felt the same wash of warmth that I felt on that autumn morning sipping coffee in the sunroom. We said so much with no words.

I inherited the perfectionism and shame that Mom never meant to give. I knew that fabric and thread of not good enough were not how she meant to stitch our lives together. Yet it did.

Waking from the dream, I reflected on how hard I worked to remove and replace the fabric and threads of not good enough and perfectionism from the quilt of my life. That morning, I saw this inner inheritance anew. Part of my parents’ living beyond death was seeing them alive and breathing in me. The terms good or bad or right or wrong no longer matter in this new reality. To be whole means seeing them in me…all of them and all of me.

I owed an amends to Perfectionism. She may come out sharp, fierce, and critical, but how often have I treated her in this same fashion? Too much and too often. She embodied the sharp criticism of my mother and the stinging self-righteousness of my father. The duet of their voices blended in harmony with this thirteen-year-old part of me.

I invited Perfectionism to tea. She sank onto the worn couch and sipped from my mother’s cat mug. She appeared much less assuming as she sipped honey lavender stress relief tea than she felt on the inside when she woke.

I gazed into her large chocolate eyes and noticed her stiffening neck. I owed her an amend for the thousands of hours and dollars I spent attempting to eradicate her. All she ever tried to do was help me survive. Today she simply wanted me to live one more day on this parentless planet. I knew she worried that if she relaxed, I would unravel. Worse, she feared I would lose the thread that stitched me to Mom and Dad.

I looked Perfectionism in the eyes and held her face gently between my hands. “Thank you so much. I get it now. I know you feared that we couldn’t face the estate and grieve Mom and Dad too. I see how you’ve protected me. I love you, and I am sorry.”

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