What is good enough?

For most of my life, I have never felt good enough. 

It’s not a quality I like about myself but it’s true. In grade school, I wasn’t cool or pretty enough. In high school, I wasn’t skinny or smart enough. In college, I wasn’t skilled or connected enough. After college, I didn’t have enough experience or enough emotional strength to overcome hard things. I self sabotaged hard. 

However, if you asked me what enough looks like, I wouldn’t know how to answer it, except tell you it’s not me. 

In my profession, being visibly enough matters. Having a strong personal brand or byline matters. I never felt like I was living up to what I always imagined success in my life to look like. In high school, I had big dreams of being a journalist in NYC but little confidence that it could actually happen. In college, I felt so inadequate next to my peers. Since college, I have made it my personal mission to always work harder than the next person and prove myself. Now, in my late 30s, the only thing I can confidently tell you that came out of that is burnout.

And then, just as I was finally about to prove to myself that I could do something remarkable, like get my masters from an Ivy League school, my mom died. My need or desire to be good enough stopped in that instance. 

I welcomed this idea of invisibility, being able to hide in my grief. Things that once mattered so much to me, stopped. My personal ambition crumbled, while I scrambled to survive in a world without my mom. Mornings used to look like 6am wake up calls and long runs, and soon turned into barely getting out of bed to catch my train to work. 

And then Covid happened and we miscarried twins just after the one year anniversary of my mom’s death, and I fell deeper into that hole. I welcomed the isolation that Covid brought because shutting myself off from the world was so much easier than having to face it. 

And somewhere along the way, I got lost. I never did find my way back to 6am wake up calls and long runs, and I’m not sure I will. I’m changed, forever altered. Grief does that. Trauma does that. 

And in a brain that already battled with not being good enough, I have proven that theory to be true, and I can’t seem to unlearn that. 

But there’s always that verrrry tiny voice that says, “don’t listen.” And I try to focus my attention on that. What is good enough? 

Is good enough getting out of bed in the morning and brushing your teeth when you have no desire to start the day? 

Is good enough putting clothes on and going to work when you can barely put one step in front of the other? 

Is good enough being present with your daughter, while she plays with play doh or wants to swing at the playground, when grief is tearing you apart? 

Is good enough trying again through IVF after a full year of failed IUI cycles and three previous miscarriages? 

Is good enough going for one walk a week, rather than five runs a week? 

Is good enough changing your wardrobe to include larges and mediums, and throwing out all of the smalls? 

My brain has been wired to only believe that good enough consists of the big things like, promotions, fit bodies, thinness, vacations, and perfection, but maybe good enough is oftentimes in the messiness in the middle. The slow days of grief, survival, and small wins. The basics of remembering to eat and drink water. 

For me, it’s hard to consider any of those small things enough. I have trained my brain my entire life to do extremes. When I was counting calories and running in high school, I’d always make sure to shave off 200 or so calories from my 1,000 goal and run a few more miles, just for good measure. 

In college, I worked two jobs and had an internship while having a full course load because I needed to prove that I could, to make up for all of the messiness in my life.

After college, I set out to finish writing a book by the age of 25 while working 80 hours a week at a job that barely paid my rent.

Before I turned 30, I made a checklist of all of the things I wanted to do before then, like become a Director, run a marathon, and buy a house. I did all of those things but was left still feeling like I was not good enough.

After my mom died, when I was 31, I didn’t care if I was good enough. And I wish I could tell you now that I am happy, but I actually crave that motivation to do more. I like a challenge. I like to feel like I am achieving success.

So where is the balance? How do you feel like you are enough when you’re constantly wanting more out of life?