I Am Enough

I lay there in the dark while everyone else was sleeping. My eyes open. I felt the familiar tension in my solar plexus. I was perplexed because I did all the things that I thought I would need to do in order to make that feeling go away. It’s been there for as long as I can remember. 

I couldn’t understand it. I liked my life. I really enjoyed being a mother.  Having a crowded kitchen with people squished together around the table made me happy. Even with the mismatched chairs and glasses. . It was always an honor to have those impromptu moments of having strangers and friends sitting together. You know, the Bostonian way when a meal isn’t a meal until someone is being made fun of.

I had a supportive husband, healthy, happy kids, a home and a golden retriever for God sake. I had the gratitude journal, great coworkers, a rewarding career, friends and a community who came together with deep and meaningful volunteer work. A good majority of the time I did indeed feel authentically happy and even confident. And even felt looked after by the universe. 

So what was this tension in my gut? The one that I could override with busy work and a bustling life. I could get it to quiet down when I was working and being “productive”. Then, in the quiet, when there were no distractions, it always returned.

It wasn't until I had completely exhausted myself as a healthcare professional during the pandemic, tapped out and sat alone on a beach for weeks that I started to understand what it was telling me. I had always thought that it was because I didn’t have enough time, or enough money. I always expected it to finally go away when I did the next thing.

But it became clear what it was telling me. It’s not that I didn’t have enough. It’s that I wasn’t enough. It was this persistent feeling that I should be doing more. Why? Because it’s how I justified my existence in this world. It’s how I felt worthy. Being productive, put together, being busy is how I fit in. It’s how I received approval from others and approval from myself. 

The problem is that when living from this space there’s no finish line. How many hours would I have to work, how many people would I have to say yes to, how many people did I have to avoid disappointing until I could feel like I was “good”?

And that’s when I became a woman possessed. I had for many years studied emotions and their effects on the body and illness. Now I went deeper. I researched for hours, hired coaches and met with a therapist for several months. 

I got radically honest and named what I felt and what I wanted. I knew I was half-assing my goals and dreams. I knew that I was taking the safe route. I told myself it was because I had to pay my bills, take care of my kids, and show up for my community. But that was the socially acceptable way to escape what I was feeling. Instead of using alcohol, opioids, gambling or sex, to avoid feelings that I didn’t want to feel, I used busyness. Most addictions receive shame. But we receive approval and sometimes even applause when we over-schedule ourselves to exhaustion. “Look at how selfless she is!”

It’s time for us to call bullshit. It’s time to get radically honest about what that feeling is in our gut. It’s not until we start naming it that we can get down to the business of showing up as full versions of ourselves. I don’t want to live as a divided version of myself. I want to be intact and undivided. I want to feel it when I say, “I am enough”

And I want to help other women do the same. I hold space for honesty and vulnerability, I help name emotions and beliefs, I help find relief and I help women create goals from a place of clarity.