What Is Enough?

What is enough?

Who gets to determine what is enough?

Is it a particular quantity?

When it comes to our personal lives -

our needs to do, to be, to accomplish . . .

Who determines what that looks like?

Is there a particular income, height, weight, accomplishment, number of hours worked in a day, number of hours slept at night, hair color, eye color, fashion sense, belief, moral code, etc., etc., etc,

that help us reach the point of saying . . .

that's it.

I've done it.

I'm good enough.

 

As a woman -

I struggle with this every day.

I open a magazine and I am met with the images of young teen girls made up to look like adults with tiny little bodies and perfect skin and hair.

I go to the movies and see women who manage to do it all, who look perfect, who wake up with perfectly combed "bed hair" and manage to keep it together.

 

Where is the sense of reality?

 

I have spent the last several months identifying who I am.

Who I was as a teenager.

Who I have become today.

Am I enough?

 

I talk with my friends and hear the tales of their journeys as they struggle with the same thing.

I go to social events and listen as everyone talks about how perfect everything in their life is.

I greet a friend or acquaintance and ask "how are you?" -

they answer by telling me they are "great", "just fine", "really good".

 

But are they?

Do they feel as if they are enough?

 

Recently, as I have been processing my divorce, I have found that many issues have emerged for me.

Issues that I have buried.

Issues that I didn't even realize I had.

Issues about self-worth, self-esteem and purpose.

I'm not going to go into the whole mess and process that has been wrapped up in this part of my journey -

but let me just say . . .

I'm beginning to believe that I am enough.

Just as I am.

I may not have the perfect body.

My hair may not be thick and full and lustrous like the commercials tell me it should be.

I have stretch marks, and scars and imperfections.

Some days I am happy and driven and positive.

Other days . . .I am not.

 

But regardless -

this is me.

In all the good, bad and ugly -

and I am enough! We all are.