Embracing Enough-ness Part 1

A new series in which I explore how I've wrestled with the ideas of (not) being enough

Photo AI generated by author on Canva

Imagine a small, dimly lit room with shadows creeping along the walls. In the center, a little girl with wide, innocent eyes looks up at her father, who stands with his arms crossed, a frown creasing his forehead. The contrast of the dark room emphasizes the tension, with soft light highlighting the girl’s hair. The atmosphere is thick with emotion, blending feelings of fear and confusion. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. She had tried her best. He always told her to try her best. She did, and yet, there he was with rage in his eyes because she brought home a 98 percent on her spelling test.

“Go to your room and stay there until you can figure out where the other two points went!” he roared at her.

The tears welled up, threatening to spill uncontrollably from her eyes. She felt the all to familiar tightening of her throat muscles, creating the sensation of a giant throbbing lump that caused so much pain in her tiny throat. She fought back her tears because she already knew that should one fall, the punishment would be worse. Much worse.

“Don’t you dare cry or I’ll give you something to cry about! Now get out of my sight!”

The little girl turned and walked away, head hung low. Once in her small room, she sat alone on her bed, her shoulders hunched and her gaze continued to be fixed on the floor. The white bare walls seemed to close in around her, echoing the silence that enveloped her heart.

She felt a tightness in her chest, a swirling mix of shame and confusion. She had tried so hard to please - to color within the lines, to speak softly, to always bring home a perfect score on an assignment. Yet, despite her efforts, a belief that she was a constant disappointment lingered in the air.

It was that moment, when she was eight years old, that a heavy realization washed over her: love felt conditional, as if it was something she could earn but had to be perfect to keep. She thought of the fleeting moments of praise and how quickly they turned to rage whenever she stumbled. The weight of expectation pressed down on her, making her feel small and fragile.

Sitting alone in her room, away from her stepfather’s eyes, tears descended down her cheeks. She sobbed quietly into her favorite pillow so he wouldn’t hear, unable to shake the feeling that being herself wasn’t enough. She longed to be free, but the lesson learned was a difficult one - that love seemed forever tied to perfection, leaving her lost in a maze of doubt and uncertainty.

I was that little girl.

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For centuries, scholars and lay persons alike have debated nature verses nurture, that is, are we born a tabla rasa (blank slate) or with a pre-set of dispositions that inform how we act and what we think? Most things in life are not so dichotomous. The answer is yes…to both. How we think, what we feel, how we behave are all informed by both nature and nurture. That said, I will go to the mat on the following:

We must be intentionally taught our “enough-ness.”

Enough-ness is the belief that we do enough, have enough, and are enough. It allows for us to recognize and embrace our flaws and rests on a strong foundation built on one core belief: I am perfectly imperfect and that’s okay.

In my case, I was intentionally taught my not enough-ness, and done so by more than just my stepfather. My maternal grandmother had a hand in shaping what I believe about my looks, my body, and food. My paternal step-grandmother shaped my beliefs in the importance and appropriateness of my voice. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Hirsch, had a big role in crafting how I came to understand my (lack of) intelligence. This is to just name a few. I have countless moments I can recall in which I learned that I wasn’t enough - not good enough, not polite enough, not silent enough, smart enough, not pretty or thin enough - just not enough to warrant love and acceptance. As a result, I didn’t love or accept myself. Instead I strove for perfection whenever and wherever I could.

In this series I will unjumble thoughts and beliefs about (not) being enough. I will share stories of when I learned I wasn’t enough. I will reveal the inner work I have done to change those beliefs and be vulnerable in telling you about the areas where I have not. It’s important that as we set out on the particular journey, we do so in agreement on one pinnacle belief - embracing our enough-ness is a process, not a destination we reach overnight.

Maybe you are one of the fortunate ones who didn’t grow up with overt teaching that you weren’t enough, and if that’s you, I am so happy to know that. I wouldn’t wish that teaching on my most despised nemesis. But if that is you, I do have one question - how do you keep your enough-ness in today’s world where we are constantly judged by how we measure up to others and to the social norms set forth by society? It’s one thing to embrace being enough, but keeping that belief feels like a whole other story.

Maybe you are someone who wasn’t intentionally taught that you weren’t enough, but also wasn’t intentionally taught that you were. How do you see yourself? Do you wrestle with perfectionism or embrace your flaws? How did you get to whatever place you’re at? Is it a pit stop or permanent residence?

Maybe you are like me, forced to earn love you’ve failed to keep. Maybe you’ve overcome these demons, or maybe you’re a person who has contemplated ending it all because what’t the point, anyways. Maybe you’re in the muck of the middle, desperately wanting to believe in yourself despite the voices living rent-free in your head that play on repeat telling you to lose those ten pounds that nobody but you can see, to take that promotion even though your soul is dying at that job, or to post that happily-ever-after family picture that you may or may not be (slightly) inebriated in. Take comfort in knowing that I am in the middle of it too. I see you.

If I operate with grace in my heart, I can forgive my stepfather for his rigid demands for academic excellence. After all, I am a heavily degreed individual with above level intelligence who loves learning. I was an excellent student throughout my academic journey and while I did not complete my Ph.D in sociology as planned, the decision to walk away from my graduate program at UNLV came from a realization that academia was not a good fit for me and such a degree no longer made sense for my career, NOT from the place where voices told me I couldn’t hack it or that I didn’t deserve it. I have gotten far in my life because of what I came to believe about school and my studies. I could look at my stepfather’s aggressive demands for perfect grades as a fear-based attempt to arm me with the best chance possible to achieve upward mobility and financial security. These were very things he failed to achieve in his own life, which I did achieve. I have a comfortable life in China where money is not a worry, where I am widely traveled, and where I don’t worry about my safety. It is important to tell you that when and where I couldn’t be perfect, I became a rebel instead. I dedicated much of my life to proving my stepfather wrong, which also got me quite far.

If I withhold grace and clutch onto resentments, I could position the fact that my stepfather is a narcissistic pedophile who wanted nothing more than to destroy my life at the forefront of my mind. I could continue to seethe, blaming him and all of the thems out there who mishandled my little Lori heart. I could hang on to my morally justified rage like the security blanket I clung to for comfort as a child. He doesn’t deserve grace. None of them deserve grace. I could stay enraged because it is the one emotion that reminds me that the abuse was real. But here’s what I have learned:

There comes a time in all of our lives when we must put away childish things. Grace is the path on which freedom is achieved. Bitterness is a poison that keeps us in exactly the place our abusers and enemies want us to be. Although justified, bitterness is not the road to peace, nor the path to enough-ness. Grace is not justification. Grace is a tool that allows us to shift the perspective from ourselves and how we fall short to those people who hurt us, attack us, and teach us wrong because of their own shortcomings. Grace is a tool that helps us ask and answer the question: What’s this really about? Grace allows us to craft a different narrative that may, or may not, be entirely true but that does help lead us to a better mental place.

What is the narrative I have crafted? It is one of a father who dropped out of school, who struggles with his own self worth, and who came from a loveless home and abusive family. This man is a father so overtaken by fear he cannot see the damage he does to a daughter he claimed to love:

In the early hours of morning, before the sun had fully emerged from behind the horizon, a father sat at the kitchen table. The weight of his thoughts pressed heavily on him, a constant whisper in his mind that said he was not doing enough. He could hear his daughter playing in her room, the murmur of her vivid imagination was a reminder of her potential.

To him, her future was bound to academic achievement - a strict ladder he believed she must climb to escape the cycle of hardship. Growing up, he dropped out of school to work. He desperately tried to escape his physically abusive father and alcoholic mother. One of five children, he dreamt of different avenues, yet as an adult, he found himself trapped in low-paying jobs or unemployed, struggling to provide. It was this fear of failing to offer her a brighter life that limited what he would and would not accept from his daughter: 100 percent was acceptable. Anything less was not. He believed she would thank him for this rigid adherence to academic excellence later. She just didn’t know it yet.

While I am most certainly NOT going to thank him for the damage he did, I will offer this man grace because doing so sets me free.

Perhaps, Dear Reader, it can for you too.