Perfect Is Boring (And It Tastes Like Kale): Finding Belonging and Purpose Without Changing Who You Are - Hardcover

Johnston, Jess

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593728246 ISBN 13: 9780593728246

Verlag: Convergent Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

What if we accepted our struggles and stopped trying to impress our friends? In this poignant, hilarious book, the bestselling co-author of I’ll Be There (But I’ll Be Wearing Sweatpants) shares her experiments in finding our way back to each other

Jess Johnston used to feel alone in her mess. In a random burst of courage, she started sharing about those insecurities and struggles out loud, and what she found shocked her. Again and again, people replied, “Me too! I thought I was the only one!”

In Perfect is Boring (and It Tastes Like Kale), Jess reminds readers that no one’s living a perfect life, and there’s a powerful interpersonal connection that happens when we’re real about it. Maybe some people are cut out for perfectionism. (Martha Stewart? Daniel Tiger’s Mom?) For the rest of us, the secret to living a full and connected life is finding the courage to show up as our real selves and stop participating in our own loneliness.

With honesty, heart, and humor, Johnston shares the lessons she’s learning (and relearning) about cultivating an authentic life, including:

• “I count, I’m important, and I matter—even if people introduce themselves to me 500 times.”
• “I want to be the best mother that has ever mothered, but it turns out I’m a mother who has a literal meltdown because her vacuum got run over by the car.”
• “Showing up is more important than winning. Trying is more important than saving face.”

Written for anyone who's ever felt left out, or wanted to throw their phone across the room after looking at Instagram, Perfect is Boring (and It Tastes Like Kale) offers readers a breath of fresh air by sharing the unfiltered truth that we're in this together.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jess Johnston lives in Southern California with her husband and four kids, who are the loves of her life. She is an Enneagram Seven and is enthusiastic about everything—but especially people, travel, and sauces. Jess’ writing makes you feel like you’re sitting cross-legged on her couch in your cozy pants while sharing hearts and drinking coffee. She is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, I’ll Be There (But I’ll Be Wearing Sweatpants) and has been a top contributor to publications such as The Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, and Motherly.

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Lie #1: Today I’ll Be Perfect

10/06/2019

Dear Diary,

I couldn’t find my keys again.

After looking for an eternity (okay, ten minutes . . .), I was about to give up and resign myself to a life of biking forever. It’s fine, I can pick up all four kids from school on my handlebars. Graham asked me if I threw them away, which was offensive.

They were in the trash.

Love,

Jess

The high school doors loomed ominously in front of me, and I felt sick. I glanced behind me. Should I make a run for it? But a river of students flooded into the entrance, pulling me with them. Laughter, shouting, and the clanging of lockers opening and shutting merged into an indecipherable cloud of noise.

I was the new kid again, and I wanted to be anywhere in the whole world but here. A group of gorgeous girls walked past me, their Abercrombie jeans hugging just below their hips, their long straight hair flowing behind them, and their perfume wafting over me like a secret they would never tell. I was suddenly hyperaware of my clothes and the way my hair frizzed instead of lying flat. I shifted the weight of my backpack on my bony shoulder, my T-­shirt and pants still hanging off me, even though I was six months into recovery from a yearlong battle with anorexia. The bell rang and my soul left my body, the school spreading out in front of me like a maze. I couldn’t be late. It would just be one more thing to add to my list of screwups and things that were wrong with me.

Jessica Cushman:

Tall, but surprisingly bad at basketball (she blames her small feet). Five foot nine and size seven and a half shoe, in case you were wondering.

Tries to blend in, but kinda sticks out in a bad way, like you might trip over her (again, very tall).

Bad sense of direction and zero navigation skills (that’s why she is definitely going to be late to first period).

Face turns bright red after any and all physical exertion. You might think she needs a hospital, she does not, it’s just her face.

Organization style is “shove papers in bag, in drawer, in locker, and never throw anything away just in case.” Definitely doesn’t know where her class schedule is or where that sticky note with her locker combination went.

Person she identifies with the most from 1990s rom-­coms: Josie Geller from Never Been Kissed.

The whole day felt like one of those dreams where you’ve lost your voice. The only thing more terrifying than class were the snack breaks between periods, when other kids congregated and I took laps up and down the hall as if I had somewhere to go so I wouldn’t seem like the friendless loser that I was. At lunchtime I hid in a bathroom stall, tucked my feet up on the toilet lid in case they checked beneath the stalls, and cried. The only outlet for my pain was tossing the sandwich from home in the garbage. I couldn’t control a single thing in my life except that sandwich. I just knew that the world wouldn’t hurt so badly if I were more. More what? Um, everything.

Have you felt it? Do you know what I mean? I just wish I could hug you in the moment when you first experienced this, and I wish I could hug me, too. We were never meant to feel this way.

Our stories are all different, but over the last decade of writing, I’ve talked to hundreds of thousands of women who struggle to accept themselves as they are. They struggle with feeling that they lack something, that they’re not quite enough, and that somehow (at the exact same time) they are far too much.

It’s hard to be a woman.

If we’re organized and driven, we feel bad that we’re not more easygoing and spontaneous. We wrestle with shame because we’re human in our parenting, friendships, and marriages, not superheroes who never make mistakes. We question our value because we don’t look like fitness models—­and if we are fitness models, we still question our value and have deep insecurities over our hair or skin. Speaking of hair, we wish we brushed it more and remembered to clean the receipts out of the side-­door compartment of our car, or we wish we weren’t so uptight about keeping everything organized just right. We wish we slowed down more to enjoy the moment, or we wish we were more driven and had more purpose in our lives (sometimes we wish both at the same time, and that’s confusing). At a surface level, our hair is too flat, too curly, too stringy; our hips are too wide, too womanly, too narrow, too boyish. On a deeper level, we are too sensitive, too passive, too intense, too angry, too bossy.

We apologize constantly, for being human, or for being incapable of being seventeen places at once. We feel guilty for missing bake sales and volunteer hours because we’re working full-­time, or not joining that family vacation because we can’t afford it. There is no winning. There is only trying and trying until we’re sick, tired, and disillusioned.

About a decade ago, I made a friend named Aubree (you’re going to hear a lot about her). Aubree changed my life. From day one, she was frighteningly real. “How’s it going?” I’d ask her if I ran into her in town. “It’s pretty horrible today, actually,” she’d say. “I’m struggling with some things and just not feeling great.”

Her authenticity terrified me, but it also intrigued me. I was busy channeling my best Pollyanna. I’m happy! Maybe the happiest! Marriage is great, thanks for asking. Motherhood is great, too. I love not sleeping, smelling like sour milk, and losing every shred of my identity. It’s my favorite.

When I was around Aubree, I felt at ease in my own skin, and I began opening up about my struggles. It was a learning process, though. She’d ask how I was doing (in a way that was sincere, like she really wanted to know), and I’d feel like I’d just been delivered a pop quiz from my high school chemistry teacher. Good? Is that the right answer? I mean maybe I’m not good. I haven’t cried in years, and I feel disconnected from my heart. This is hard. How much of my grade does this count for, because if it’s not a lot, can we go to the next question?

One morning, Aubree texted me when I was in the middle of household chaos. So far, I’d broken up five different sibling rivalries, fished a Tonka truck out of the toilet, and begged my kids to just eat their breakfast (and then cleaned most of said breakfast out of the rug). Hey want to meet at the beach? she asked. I started to text Sounds great! and stopped myself. Instead, I wrote: Hi, everything is a crapshoot today. I’m tired and grumpy and my kids are crazy. I can come, but I’m probably not going to be much fun.

Her response changed my life: I don’t care if you’re fun or not fun. I like you both ways.

It was one text out of the thousands we’ve now sent, but I’ve never forgotten it. Aubree’s graciousness and acceptance of me (in all my sweaty, dirty-­messy-­bun, under-­caffeinated, uptight glory) caused shame I didn’t even realize I was feeling to almost physically lift off me. The stress of that particular morning was just a sampling of the pressure I felt most days. It wasn’t simply about the Tonka truck or the rug; it was deeper than that. It was the invisible mental load that really weighed me down: the weight of expectation I felt as a woman.

There’s a post I see sometimes on Instagram: “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but unclench your jaw.” (It’s me. I’m the one who needs to hear it.) If you just thought, It’s me,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Convergent Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593728246
• ISBN 13: 9780593728246
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Convergent Books; https://detailguardz.com/; ; Wiesenweg 23; Bebra ; Hessen; 36179; Deutschland