On being ‘Good Enough’
I loved the insight my son gave me a week or so ago. He said ‘With you Mum, it is never enough!’. We were discussing the clothes that he has been buying. A major step forward for the boy who likes everything to stay the same and has had the same shoes for years and years. I was contemplating that the next purchase could surely be a new hoodie, and he groaned with exasperation, rolled his eyes and said the statement above.
My husband said the same statement to me a few days later and I am now beginning to see where ‘never enough’ has fitted into my thoughts and into my life. I want to say to my son that the statement is actually a reflection of what I feel about myself rather than about him. I have lived ‘never enough’ to distraction and it led to my current health situation, to mental exhaustion and the need to rest. ‘Never enough’ helped me to get a first class honours degree in Psychotherapy and a successful counselling practice that I am proud of. ‘Never enough’ pushed my creativity to new heights, and left me resentful at my later inadequacies. It is the double edged sword that has given me both joy and suffering. To be ‘good enough’ has always felt mediocre and confining. ‘Good enough’ spells not good enough, and that feels, or has felt, am impossibility for me to latch on to. Good enough is a concept I am beginning to lean into and my creativity has given me the opportunity to play with this concept.
Sometimes ‘good enough’ is okay and that is what I want my son to hear. That I have acknowledged his very honest reflections about me, and I am willing to grapple and change. This is a good discovery and one I am hopeful I am observe and soften in the coming days. And as the birds begin their dawn chorus, this owl is going back to bed!