Learning, through loss, that I am enough

This message. This message speaks to me. It hits me in my heart and in my mind.

Like many people I know in my world, I’ve struggled my entire life with being “enough.” Some of that expectation was imposed by others at a young age that I’ve carried with me for all my life. Some of it has been self-imposed. 

In my younger years, I had one parent who believed in tough-love, you-can-do-better  parenting. If I came home with 98 per cent on a test, I was asked why I didn’t get 100. I could do better. It didn’t help that particular parent could be kind, loving and supportive one moment and scathing, angry and malicious the next. In addition to being told that I could do and be better from one parent, the easiest way to exist was to constantly demonstrate that I was humbled by the criticism and not yap back. My other parent was kind, loving and supportive but, in my case, that parent did so from a position behind the scenes (for the most part). That belief that I was not “enough” was reinforced for the first 18 years of my life. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming anyone, even that parent. I have no idea if the parenting style was a pattern that was passed down through the generations or something developed by a dominant personality. Either way, it was what it was.

When I left home to go to college and beyond, and started developing into a woman with my own thoughts and beliefs, there was always — in the back of my mind — a seed of doubt that would creep into my self-confidence and erode a bit of what I was building. I tried to ignore it. I tried to deflect it but it was planted too deep. I wasn’t enough. I would never be enough.

When I married My Favourite Husband (MFH), I married a strong man with a dominant personality. He’d often say I’d be bored with a man who didn’t challenge me. He was probably right. What he did do, repeatedly, was tell me I was enough. I was smart enough. I was funny enough. I was pretty enough. Did I believe him? At times. But my childhood message, the one that said I wasn’t, was planted too deep for me to completely buy it. Outwardly, I took the compliments and inwardly I bought into most of them, but they made me uncomfortable and guarded. I was able to, over the years, buy into the fact that I am smart. I am witty. I am kind. I am loving. But anything to do with my physical self, I could never accept. I try not to live with regrets but I do regret not believing all of the kind things MFH said over the years. He was a man who said what he meant. He meant those words.

Now I’m a widow. I am forced to forge my way forward; travel a new road in a different direction. This is a new opportunity for me to put the belief that I’m not enough in the past —bury it deep into the past, once and for all.

I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself and I owe it to myself to realize I am enough. I am strong enough to do all of the physical tasks needed to carry out the wishes of MFH and to make decisions on material things. I am smart enough to start a new career and all of the interactions — good and bad — that go along with it. I’m witty enough to make people smile and make myself smile. I’m kind enough that I can see the needs of others and lend a hand to help. I’m loving enough to love myself and others for who we all are and how we contribute to making the world a much better place. I’m grateful enough for the people in my life because those people make me a better person. I’m humbled enough to accept hands of support that reach out to me to help and to extend my own out to those who need one.

I recently told one of my best friends that I’m working hard to be the kind of woman that, when I walk into a room, people see me and think: “I like her energy. I like her spirit. I’d like to get to know her.” I want people to see the kindness and love reflecting through me with the grace, humour, sassiness and saltiness. I am continually working on being the kind of woman that lifts people up and not tears them down.

That woman is only possible knowing that she is enough. I am enough.

❤️