We share eyes and a body type, though you might not notice right away because I’m always wearing heels and she never is.

We never shared makeup, as she never wears it. The drama of boys and middle school and high school clique power wars were lost on her.

I forged her signature on a tanning salon permission slip before prom because I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t let my fair-skinned, freckled self recline in a sweaty bed of potentially cancer-causing rays.

There were so many days I rolled my eyes at our differences–and now that I have a daughter I know she must have mentally thrown up her hands in frustration at the exact same things I do.

Yet she never told me I was piling too many books into my check-out pile at the library. Instead of telling me to turn out my light and go to sleep, to finish my book in the morning, she bought me a little light that clipped to my headboard so I could lose myself in the comfort of stories and my favorite pillow.

She drove with me to a bridal salon in the middle of a blizzard because I desperately wanted to go to a particular trunk show. I bought my dress that day, without showing any of my fashion-conscious friends. Her eyes filled with tears as I spun in my favorite dress and I trusted her honest opinion more than any influenced by trends.

I see more than my eyes when I look at her now, and it’s not always a flattering mirror.

On good days it makes me laugh that we’re both impatient and seem to have passed the trait down to my own children.

On bad days it’s infuriating. I left her house in heated tears one afternoon, more angry about my perception of her dismissing my opinion than our actual difference of opinion. Later my husband levelly stared across the table and called me out on my identical stubborn nature.

She’ll certainly make me cry again, as it sometimes seems that I inherited all of her tear ducts at birth; I cry at everything and she rarely does.

Still, I wrap my arms around other similarities: our fierce devotion to family, the way we slide into a pile of sugary mush with a baby in our arms, an unwavering belief in the power of ice cream.

I will never be the perfect daughter, but I know her door will always be open to let me try again.

And if not, I still have the key. And the garage door code.

xo

Angela

This magnet sits on our fridge. My husband got it for me, presumably because of all the times he had to listen to me complain about people at my old job who didn’t seem to be able to deal with the hard stuff.

Dealing with day-to-day stuff is all well and good. Challenging people to take things to the next level is great. But sometimes our job – whatever that may be – requires us to deal with the awkward stuff. To have hard conversations.

This is true if we’re mothers who need to have conversations with our kids about behavior. It’s true if we have a job outside the home that requires us to have good relationships with co-workers. And it’s definitely true if we’re executives who are paid way too much to avoid something because we don’t want (or don’t know how) to deal with it.

Being enough is not just about dealing with insecurities and the parts of ourselves we want to improve. It’s also about addressing the hard stuff too.

I’m working on this right now in a couple of areas – one family thing and one issue at work. How about you?

xo

Robin

For most of my life I had a really rough time trusting women. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I met women who felt like female soul mates to me; there was no competition or jealousy, just a complete and heartwarming love for each other. They taught me how to be a friend, even when I thought I had been doing a pretty good job of it alone.

So when I walked into that ballroom of so many great women I smiled BIG but went small, keeping myself in check and trying to not throw myself at others. In a way that screams of insecurity I decided to just let the day unfold and try to leave with a few new friends.

Here’s what happened instead.

I met INCREDIBLE women. I met women who would become friends of my heart within minutes of hearing their laugh, locking eyes with them and seeing our common stuff there, and I would get the humbling experience of seeing myself through their eyes.

I met women who actually thought it was a thrill to meet me.

“I got to meet @KirstenPiccini, somebody pinch me.”

Yeah, I know.

I would hug them and thank MY lucky stars that this sweet, funny, irreverent and completely adorable girl liked me enough to introduce herself and then my stomach would spin when I read a tweet that said, “@KirstenPiccini is just as sweet and wonderful as she is online.”

Well, who else would I be? I thought.

It simply never enters my mind to try to be anything other than the girl I show you online.

I am lazy.

I do love Law & Order.

I do wear three-inch heels every day.

I am always going to feel infertile.

Cupcakes are AWESOME.

Yes, yes, I do talk too much.

I cry daily, about everything from Hallmark commercials to the plight of hunger in our world.

And yes! I do care about you. I do. I hurt when you hurt, I laugh when you laugh. I have guilt and love and support in bunches for you.

I know that people could say, “She can’t possibly be that nice. No one is that nice!”

I don’t know if I am. I admit to being snarky and using really filthy language offline. I love off-color jokes and will do just about anything to make you giggle, but am I nice all the time? Nope. I’m human. Yet I know that when I left on Saturday, mixed with the hugs and tears I was crying at the thought of leaving my new friends there was also an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that these women saw me that way, that they thought I was someone worth knowing.

The truth?

It’s these women I am so lucky to know. It’s these women who showed me how to make a connection and make a friend. I honestly just hope they keep in touch and that they know that meeting them was the highlight of my weekend.

At this place in my life I find that being enough has become about letting go and allowing other people change your life for the better. Seeing myself through their eyes for just one day was enough to let me know that maybe the way I’m living my life is actually changing other people too.

Being the same ole me never felt so good.  

Talk to me: Do you believe you are yourself onscreen and off? Would it ever occur you to be anything else? Have you met people who are one way online and another off screen?

xo

Kir

via Kathleen Sawyer, Local Wisdom Cards

We all need reminders or mantras, or symbols that help us stay on course. Things that help refocus us when being enough seems impossible. So the notion of coming up with ten things that I need or love to be enough seemed like a great idea.

Except that I cannot think of 10 things.

Or I can….

Things like…

My daughter who reminds me each day that life is a miracle and that there is no choice but to live each day with no regrets.

My running shoes that tell a story of me logging miles I never thought I could run.

My wig from my days of chemotherapy that reminds me this too shall pass.

My new home office that reminds me that sometimes all we need is a dream and a passion.

The jasmine plant that I planted after rooting it in water, which is now slowly but surely growing new leaves despite all the odds.

The handwritten note from a student asking me not to leave teaching.

The book Life is a Verb by Patti Digh, because, well…it is.

My wedding picture to my husband, because he, no matter how much I neglect to thank him, supports me and believes in me.

My Weight Watchers membership card because I was successful once and know I can be again.

And this reminder,

(via PeaPress1)

But…I realized something as I made this list. The truth of what I need to be enough is actually much simpler. The truth of what I truly need to be enough is within me. I know it sounds cliché and oversimplified, but all I really need to be enough is to be me.

Knowing that being me, whatever I look like, is ok.

Knowing that I have an indefinite number of chances to do things better or differently in life, as a mom, and as a woman.

Knowing that it was the strength and determination in ME that got me where I am today and will get me where I need to be tomorrow.

Knowing that though I might feel better at a certain weight, I am still “the best mama” ever to my daughter just as I am.

Me, me, me.

An imperfect work in progress who believes in herself despite the roller coasters and obstacles that sometimes make me feel otherwise. What else could I possibly need?

 xo

Elena

We hope you will read, comment, link up,
and explore the stories of others who have linked.

When linking up, please show some JBE love and link back to us
with the BE badge for all to see.
Links to posts not related to Be Enough Me will be deleted.

No Be Enough Me next Monday as

we are going to take a break for the Memorial Day Holiday

Want to make sure that you get the prompts every week
plus all sorts of other Just.Be.Enough. surprises?
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter (coming out every Thursday).

——-

My mother reading to my Sunday School class. Can you spot me at age 3?

When I was three years old I went to a little Baptist-run preschool where we were made to sleep on cots and watch a lot of tv.

This was 1980, when there was no such thing as cable, and we sat on a tiled floor and speculated about why the puppets were so hideous on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

Ok, maybe I’ve added that last part to my preschool memories but it’s a fair question, am I right?

I remember wooden blocks and a little “grocery store” and a carpet where we sat for reading circle. Our teacher played the piano each day when we arrived and we sang “Good Morning to You.”

I wore homemade dresses with Peter Pan collars, thick white tights and my black Mary Janes. My daddy drove me to school, down the windy hills to the river valley below, and we sang Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day.

In the afternoon I’d return home to my Grandad, displaced from his Kentucky tobacco farm, and we’d tend his tomatoes or walk in the woods.

My memory is cloudy, as if viewed through a cataract eye. But there are glimpses. There are moments. There are sights and smells I can conjure in my mind as clearly as the bread I baked today.

What I want my children to remember is this:

The dinner time craziness.

The smell of the attic.

The way no matter what we’re doing, their father and I never deny them a spot on our laps.

The view from the living room.

The rise and fall of the creek.

The silly songs and inside jokes and kitchen dance parties we have on Friday nights.

I know they’ll remember some other things too: the look on my face when frustration reduces me to tears. The rushing to the door and the failures- large and small.

But I’m trying each day to shape their memories in the reality of now. When they look back, I want them to feel the warmth of this house, with all its volume and love, and remember singing Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day.

—

What about you? What would you like your children to remember?

Us, taken about 2 weeks ago.

My first year of law school, I flunked a class. Contracts I.

I just didn’t get it. And when your entire grade rides on one test for the entire semester and you don’t get it? You flunk the class.

I still remember walking down the hall to see the grades for my number. Each student was assigned an anonymous number, next to which your grade for each class was posted in a hallway of the law school. It’s a brutal system. Watching kids walk up, scan the rows and rows of paper for each class looking for their number and corresponding grade.

You had the kids who would stand there completely motionless and emotionless, so you had no idea how they’d done. You had the cocky ones who would run their fingers down each page, “find” their number (I always assumed they already had come at another time so they KNEW they were in the clear) and tap it loudly saying, “YES!”

The semester I flunked Contracts I, I arrived at a time when no one else was in the hallway to check my grades. Good thing too, I literally sank to the floor in my horror. Depending upon my other grades (which weren’t in yet), that could have been it – I could have been kicked out, not surviving year 1. The infamous “not everyone survives the first year of law school.”

Good LORD, I could be a statistic!

After all was said and done, though, my GPA ended up higher than a 3.0, so they allowed me to stay. I just had to repeat the class the next Fall. With the new first years (which was beyond embarrassing, because there’s only one reason a 2L is in a Contacts I class, right?).

And the other thing I had to do to make up for it was attend summer school, THAT summer. I had to have a certain amount of credits entering into my second year, so summer school was a must.

So I scrambled to find some summer classes.

And I stayed.

Mid June, I met a boy.

And last week he and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

It’s simple, really:

The only reason I met my husband is because I flunked that class. And if I hadn’t have met him, I wouldn’t have my family. This family that vexes me and exhausts me but gives me more joy than seems possible.

None of it without that flunked class. He was an undergrad business major and I was in law school. There was no other way we would have met.

I’ve always said it’s God’s hand. I ended up graduating from law school in the top quarter of my class, so it wasn’t like I didn’t understand law. Just not that one class.  That semester.

And out of that failure, came the greatest success of my life.

xo

Missy

I grew up in the shadow of my amazing mom. I was told that I looked like her at a very young age and that still continues. Plus we must sound exactly the same, because if I answered a call that was really for her, the person would talk to me until I made it really clear that I had no idea who they were or why they were excited that the grant came through.

I think as women we look to our mothers for our own view of the world and, as we age, we learn what to keep from that experience and what to let go.

Lately, as I navigate the world of motherhood I find myself seeking my mom’s advice and despising it when she dispenses it. A conundrum for sure, but a true and honest one.

You see I still want to make her proud but I also want to be able to look at my own journey and know that I wasn’t simply copying her parenting, but rather molding it to the shape of my own family.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t respect her ideas and hold fast to the lessons she helped me learn, it just means that I am walking my own path, with her at my side.

When people tell me, “You’re just like your mother” I smile and know what they really mean is that I’m just as special, beautiful and ENOUGH as she is.

xo

Kir

• Happiness is what you make it.
• Instant gratification can cause long term unhappiness. (I talked about it here before.)
• The notion of of whether you’re an abstainer or a moderator.

In a nutshell, does your life go better if you abstain completely from those things you shouldn’t, or can you live by the old adage “everything in moderation?”

Without question, I’m an abstainer.

Photo Credit: Globalism Pictures

As soon as I try to do my *thing* in moderation, the moderation becomes the norm. Then the norm becomes the rule. Then I find I’ve been *treating* myself to anything and everything under the sun for a month or more and I didn’t even see it coming. Or eating that whole tray of goodies in one afternoon.

Then I go back to abstention again for awhile, get where I need to be, and start the moderation game again.

Surely I’m not the only one who cycles through life like this, am I? 

According to the research Gretchen did for her book, everyone generally falls into one camp or the other. So today I propose the question to you:

Are you an abstainer or a moderator? Do you wish you were one or the other?

I think I’m starting to be OK with my cycles of abstention and moderation. Either that, or I’m starting to be OK with MYSELF. I like to spend a month certain times of year eating, drinking and being VERY MERRY. Because that’s fun. And it makes me feel happy while I’m doing it.

If I didn’t allow myself certain times of year to go off the moderation train, I think I’d be a less happy person.

Eating well, being healthy, and drinking little, if at all, certainly does make me feel physically and emotionally good. No question about it.

But sometimes being a little bad? Really does feel oh-so-good.

Photo Credit: Nomadic Lass

xo

Missy

You’ve got a pretty sweet life and right now it feels like the whole world could be yours. After coming back from a four-month exchange in Germany I know you’re consumed by conflicting feelings of wanderlust and wondering if you have what it takes to make it in the much smaller world of high school.

I’ll give you a hint: You will get to travel more, so don’t worry. And you do have what it takes, though you won’t really know it for years.

And one more thing: It doesn’t matter what I tell you now. You have to live it to learn it.

I could tell you all about university and how you’ll make it through even though at first it feels impossible. I could tell you about one guy you’ll think is for you and how it will kind of suck that it doesn’t seem to be working out that way, but that would ruin the experience of meeting your one true love and knowing he is actually the right one. And if I told you about the early days of searching for your career, it might make the experience less frustrating but it won’t help you understand what it is you’re meant to do.

I want you to learn these things for yourself. In fact, that’s how it works. I can’t tell you – you have to live it to learn it.

And you will. You’ll live things you never imagined and learn things you wouldn’t have thought mattered. You’ll figure out that it’s okay to be who you are and to express that in ways that are meaningful to you. You’ll find your confidence only to have it yanked right out from underneath you and, after the hardest experience of your life, you’ll know what it means to be grateful for the tough stuff.

You will understand, as only those who have been through a hard time can, that you can find treasure in pain and that there’s beauty in the breakdown.

Don’t be scared. Remember – life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to be lived. So go out and live the life you’re meant to. It’s the only way to find out what matters.

I’ll give you a sneak peek: This is you (us) today at 18 weeks pregnant. It’s not the first child,
and you’re older than you thought you’d be when having kids, but it’s all good.

xo

Robin

We hope you will read, comment, link up,
and explore the stories of others who have linked.

When linking up, please show some JBE love and link back to us
with the BE badge for all to see.
Links to posts not related to Be Enough Me will be deleted.

Prompt for next week:

What 10 things do you NEED for your Be Enough Journey?

***Or….feel free to link up with a more open ended “Be Enough Me” story***

Want to make sure that you get the prompts every week
plus all sorts of other Just.Be.Enough. surprises?
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter (coming out every Thursday!).

—–

At 4:45 am on a warm September morning I ran into my neighbors quite by accident. It was a somber and private scene that I wanted to run away from, but that would have made my uninvited presence even more obvious. So I picked up my jogging pace and sped by them making neighborly eye contact with the daughter ducking into the backseat, giving a nod to the mom digging her keys out of her purse, and I watched silently as the dad came out of the house with one suitcase that belonged to the daughter.

One by one the tears started down my face, releasing into a full-fledged sob as I reached my house. And I stopped running and turned back to them, and as they pulled away, I considered stopping them and yelling “WAIT, wait – I want her to know that it does get better!!!”

*******
I wore jeans this week. Size 2 jeans that do fit. I hated them the whole day. The way they touch my skin and pull at my thighs and ride down my muffin top. I can feel the seams along the legs and feel the zipper when it touches my soft stomach.

I’d catch a glance at myself in mirrors all day long and see my large backside accentuated by these jeans, how my thighs were too close together and how the baggy shirt I chose actually looked like a tent over my midsection and now did everyone think I looked pregnant?

I barely ate that day for fear that even eating an apple would add to my ample thigh, and then I realized that my size 2 jeans – while uncomfortable – were actually a brilliant diet aid.

But I hate jeans – the way they touch my body. Give me a swishing, forgiving skirt to hide my womanly shape and all of my flaws. And when I wear jeans I become a horrible mother. I snap at my kids and don’t want to play on the floor. I don’t want to take them places for fear of ridicule and stares at my figure, and I get irritated easily. Damn jeans – a reminder that I have curves and bumps and squishy places and saggy things and they make me angry.
*****
I had an eating disorder in high school. I starved 30 pounds off of myself and when I couldn’t starve any longer I found the beauty that was throwing my food back up, popping laxatives like M&Ms, and learning that diuretics could help you loose a quick 5 pounds.

And while I was basically ‘cured’ by my mid-point in college, no one prepared me for the lifelong illness that this really is. At 43 and the mother of three kids here I am still feeling like that 17-year-old caught simply licking an apple and crying herself to sleep for that sin.

I don’t starve myself or practice any form of bulimia and haven’t for nearly 20 years – but here I stand at a healthy 5’7″ and 122 pounds and I’m still not cured.
*****
So how do I tell her that it will be okay? How do I tell her that yes, you can stop the unhealthy and physically destructing habits, but the mental ones will stay with you just like with any addict. How you will still think about almost everything that enters your mouth, how you will still see only your flaws in the mirror, and how your size 2 jeans will feel uncomfortable and angry at you. Food is a daily requirement for survival and when it’s your ‘drug of choice’ it makes just daily living sometimes painful.

But I can tell her that things got better for me when I became a mother. How I had to give my body completely to my baby when I was pregnant the first time. How selfish the person with the eating disorder is when they watch their body grow with a baby.

And I can tell her that things got better when I had a daughter. How I go to bed nightly praying that my daughters don’t see me glancing in mirrors or trying to hide my flaws. How I teach them to eat healthy and shower them with love, yet how I hope they never find out my secrets. How I hope I’m not the parent at 4:45 am driving my anorexic daughter to a place that can help her because I couldn’t.

But through all of the pain that is living with an eating disorder your entire life, I do want her to know that there is so much joy and hers is a life worth living. I want to tell her to throw away her jeans and look at all of the beauty she is missing while she is staring in the mirror.

I have bad days. I have bad jeans days. I do. But those days have become fewer and fewer as the happy swishy skirt days have taken over. Motherhood has given me a joyful outlook that I never thought possible. I want to raise strong, happy, loving, accepting daughters who will love themselves their whole lives and not travel the road their mother did. These small people have given me so much hope that I never thought was possible.

Motherhood has given me a second chance to see that my physical imperfections are the ones that made it possible to bring a new life into this world. That the squishy parts of me are their favorite parts and I thank them daily for healing my heart.

So I’m yelling down to you now, sweet neighbor: “It does get better. It really does. It will never, ever be the same, but it does get better once you can share just a little bit of your heart with someone else.”

Tracy
Owner and Editor, www.sellabitmum.com
Follow me on twitter @sellabitmum
Like me on Facebook Sellabit Mum