Let Perfect Burn

Season 1 Finale of Let Perfect Burn

• Tara Beckett • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Only 9 months ago now, I was leaving a psychiatric hospital, the moment in my life that inspired me to create this podcast. The laughter and the joy during these months on Let Perfect Burn were moments where my depression lightened, because I felt full- I was having these intimate, rewarding conversations with my guests. 

These women on the show were real, they were vulnerable, they were raw, they were gracious, they were funny, they made me laugh (hard) and they made me feel so very alive every single time I stepped in studio.

And while we say goodbye (just for now) I want to leave you with every guest from Season 1 reminding us that when you let perfect burn, what’s left can be really, really, beautiful.

Tara Beckett:

Hi, I'm Tara Beckett, and welcome to the season one finale of let perfect burn. Season One of this podcast featured 16 women, brave enough to tell their stories to you, my beloved let perfect burn community. These women were real. They were vulnerable. They were raw, they were gracious, they were funny. They made me laugh hard. And they made me feel so very alive every single time I stepped in studio. I am so grateful to these women. And I am so grateful for you listeners. I got all of your messages and texts and words in person that made me so proud that this podcast had met one of my greatest goals for you to find a little moment from one of the women that made you feel seen and heard. I hope that when you heard guest stories, you knew you were not alone in your breaking points and pain, that there are broken pieces and each and every one of us. We are beautiful, imperfect humans deserving of grace in our failures, and joy in our victories great and small. A few weeks ago, one of my listeners asked me, Do you still struggle? Because you seem so funny and energetic on the show? Like did you figure out your mental health? Know only nine months ago now, I was leaving a psychiatric hospital, the moment of my life that inspired me to create this podcast. Since that moment, I have been working closely with my outpatient therapist and psychiatrist. You see, the hospital was only the beginning. I have broken over and over again in this time. And only just recently do I feel true and healthy light coming into my body. The laughter and the joy during these months on let perfect burn wasn't me hiding my struggle. But actually, there were moments that my depression lightened. Because I felt full. I was having these intimate, rewarding conversations with my guests. This process has been so painful for me. And also so empowering and clarifying. But no, I will never stop struggling. The difference is now I can look at my struggles in a way that reminds me. I am a human being and not dirty, shameful garbage because I am not perfect. More importantly, I am living my life with more love and more protection over the woman inside of me. Now I love her too damn much to ever leave her behind again. For Season Two of let perfect burn. I am really interested in putting some serious fire under this shows ass. And what I mean by that is I want to bring you the stories of women who may have been perfectly sitting quietly until something broke open and told them it was time to get loud. I want you to hear from activists, women and femmes making the best kinds of trouble. And those who are fed up and are organizing to make our country and our world better than we frickin left it. I want to hear from women running for office as much as the women organizing phone banking parties in their apartment to get out the vote. There is no act too small when acting on behalf of the greater good. If you are one of these women, or if there's a woman or femme in your life that we need to hear from please email me at let perfect burn@gmail.com or hit me up on Instagram at let perfect burn. And while we say goodbye just for now, I want to leave you with every guest from season one, reminding us that when you let perfect burn, what's left can be really, really beautiful.

Alicia Hunt:

I absolutely love that you've got a podcast that's dedicated to just tearing down the concept of doing things perfectly. appointment, especially as women, we are just so indoctrinated to do everything perfectly. And I am absolutely no exception to that rule. I just want to get everything right all the time. And I'm so hard on myself when I don't you know, and it's been such a long process of learning to be kind to myself when things don't go perfectly, and just sort of let that what I don't even know where that image comes from. Where are you this perfect idea of how everything's you could perfectly on what does that even gone perfectly? If it's never happen?

Michelle Cove:

Well, I love the phrase so much. It's so relevant in a timely in our culture. You know, of all my many issues. I'm sure, perfection itself isn't one of them. But what I can say is that in I guess just on the heels of what I just said about authenticity, and watching people and myself grow, like that's where the juicy good stuff is. I never want to stop growing. You know, I know there's going to be more Crossroads moments, and I don't dread them. I yearn for them. Like that's how we find out who we are. And perfect says to me, I'm done. I've arrived, I nailed it, like how friggin boring to be there. Like, what are you going to do now?

Kate Eckstein:

Woof, letting perfect burn. This is big. Yeah, I think letting perfect burn is for me this image of what I have left behind, like, like we started out talking about on the show, like the things that I have shed, those are the things that I have let burned, and I have let them burn away, I have let them disappear. You know, sometimes they still come back up. But letting the the perfect that I thought I needed to be go allows me to be at peace with who I am with what's left, you know, like so you've let things go. And it's just this, this feeling that what's left is the right thing.

Cloteal Lee Horne:

For me, it comes by way of like, honoring my real, like my story, you know, I've done so much of like trying to fit into very white spaces, hiding my cousin's and all of them, you know, as a black woman perfect has meant has like been a white standard in some ways, as opposed to like, just who I really am, you know who I am with my grandmother, I am with my cousin's who I am with my siblings, and my friends, rather than feeling like I have to be this performative version of myself to, to exist to be validated. You know, so to me, like, that's the biggest like, let perfect burn, let that go.

Joanna Silverman:

It allows me to find my personal authority, I get rid of all the stories of what I picked up on what I should be. And I get to come home to what it is, I want to be. And if we could find that personal authority. It's, it's so freeing, actually. Right? It provides freedom because in every moment, you know that you're living a life, a meaningful life,

Caroline Talbot:

the whole like letting go of just like we all put these labels on the box that we live in, we put ourselves in a box, we all do it. And I always tell everyone, I'm not going to change the box that you're standing in. If you're a brunette, I'm not going to make you blonde. If you have dark skin, I'm not going to give you light skin. If you're older, I'm not going to make you younger. If you're curvier I'm not going to make you thinner. If you're thinner, I'm not going to make you curvier. But I'm going to show you that the labels beautiful, sexy, strong, awesome, kind, all these things that you think are mutually exclusive to the labels you put on yourself. I'm going to just take a big ol sharpie and write them all over the box that you put yourself in to realize that they belong there.

Eleri Ward:

It means that if you have the choice between living your life and being perfect, you should choose living your life.

Sarah Tomakich:

And I saw I think what let perfect burden means is I needed my perfectionism. It helped me it protected me from some things that happened to me. But now I don't want to be I don't want to live as protected. any war. And so I think the idea of it burning is that idea of it slowly eroding away the idea that whatever's underneath is who I want.

Katy Downey:

Not perfect burn means to me, is burning away the societal rules that have been imprinted on us on every way. What is perfect to me, it's not perfect to you, but it might, you know, the different generations have a different category of what's perfect. So perfect is not a destination. And you're going to be striving for it for so long. And that was that's what leads to burnout. Instead of you burning yourself out to be perfect, burn perfect, and just be yourself.

Alyssa Keegan:

I wrote this really beautiful answer to that question. And I was thinking about that. While I was preparing for today, and it occurred to me that like, that was true the day that I wrote it. And today is a different day. And the truth is that perfect is a part of me. Perfect is a helpful part of me. But it is not the part that should always be leading. And so letting perfect burn, rather than it being something to get rid of to disintegrate. I wonder if it's something like a tool, use when necessary. With consciousness and deliberate agency, that perfect burn

Paige Clark Perkinson:

means burn it down. Just burn it all to the ground. There's so much going wrong in the world right now. There's so much trauma and struggle and hardship for everyone. Don't add more to yourself by hold holding yourself to this standard of quote unquote perfect.

Lorraine Shedoudi:

And it's so interesting that you say that yesterday had a pretty challenging day. It's all the things of like, Am I doing it right? Is this ever going to be what I want it to be? And so I felt like maybe there was a moment where I said, maybe there's something that's dying, maybe there's some image of perfection, or a need for something is just passing away? And can I feel it and let it go. So I think you're right, there's a lot to learn in that idea of maybe we're just sharing something. And the experience that you went through is confronting all the things that we're probably told that we're not allowed to feel or look at or experience and how can we go right toward that and get the support that we need. So that something within us, you know, the perfection burns away, and there's room to really be genuine and real in the messiness of life.

Alex Highsmith:

I think, for me, wet perfect burn means let all of my preconceived notions go. Because in my mind, whatever I've decided the future is or whatever I've decided my ways is perfect. That's, that's why I decided it. That's why I envisioned it. But as I get older and more sober, I realized that I envisioned it that way, because that's what I know. That's just that's what I've seen. That's what I know. And I don't know very much.

Christine Hamel:

Oh, I don't know, I think it's like I think maybe at this point, it has a lot to do with grieving, letting things go allowing myself to lose what I had and letting something may be born you know, I think that's that's probably what it is like a little bit of Phoenix like I think that sense you know, like, Why hold on like you know, there just isn't there isn't time for that there's time for other things but not for that

Hannah Husband:

it's actually healthy to burn the wrong structures to the ground and there's a way that like righteous anger which is generally something that was like not allowed for me and my family of origin and I think is not permission a lot for femmes are people socialized female in our We're all like, we need that actually. It's like a really cleansing force in our beings. I also love the left part, right because again, that's about not doing it's like let it burn. So slow, let the things that aren't for you let the effort that you've been pouring yourself into that isn't serving you let it go up in flames and then you have that beautiful clean slate perfect

Unknown:

perfect

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Tara Beckett

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