Perfect Is Never the Point
I wear mismatched socks.
Not accidentally. On purpose. Most days.
It drives my children absolutely wild which, honestly, makes it even more fun.
I'm not sure exactly when I started doing it. But I know why I kept doing it. Because there is something quietly radical about looking down at your feet and thinking - yep, that's fine. That's exactly fine.
Marshmallow Clover was born from that feeling.
She tumbles when she tries to do cartwheels. Her dress is all dots with a few silly swirls. She lands with milkshake on her chin. She wobbles and giggles and trips over things and rolls right over and comes up laughing every single time.
She is not trying to be better. She is not working on herself. She is not on a journey toward some improved version of who she already is.
She is just herself. Completely, cheerfully, wobblingly herself.
And she thinks that's the best thing in the world to be.
I created her because I see her in everyone.
I see her in my daughter who tries so hard to get everything right that the trying itself becomes the heaviest thing she carries. I see her in the mum at school drop-off who apologises for things that don't need apologising for. I see her in myself on the days when nothing goes the way it was supposed to and I have to decide whether that means something is wrong with me or just that Tuesday was a Tuesday.
We are all Marshmallow Clover. Every single one of us.
The wobbly bits. The milkshake on the chin. The cartwheels that end in a heap on the grass with everyone laughing including you.
That's not failure. That's just being human.
The pressure to be perfect is the one thing I genuinely never want any child to carry out of this world we're building. Not one. Because perfect is not a real thing. It is an idea that sits just far enough out of reach to make sure nobody ever gets there, and it does a remarkable amount of damage on the way.
What Marshmallow Clover knows - and what I want every child who holds her to absorb somewhere quiet and deep - is that being you is the best kind of magic of all.
Not the polished version of you. Not the trying-really-hard version of you. Just you. As you actually are. On the wonky days and the graceful ones and all the ones in between.
That is the superpower. The real one. Being okay with being perfectly imperfect.
Because the moment we stop chasing perfect, we get to actually enjoy the cartwheel.
Even when we land in a heap.
Especially then.
Marshmallow Clover's Wobbly Wonder is available now in the Little Lightkeeper Library. She is clumsy and cheerful and full of bright light - and she will stick by your heart from beginning to end.