Be. Good. Enough.

Audio format here: https://anchor.fm/southern-bon-vivant/episodes/Be–Good–Enough-esk98b

Appropriately enough, I’ve drafted and re-drafted this post several times. 

Over the past year I’ve had quite the transformation. I finished my Masters, finished yoga teacher training, worked my way through a pandemic with two kids by myself, found a relationship with a man who I had a crush on for YEARS – who I never dreamed had any interest in me. 

But even with all of these amazing things going on, I’ve had a hard time lately. The past year has forced me to reckon with my need for perfection. We keep hearing “just try your best” or “I’m trying my best” or “aim for the moon and if you fail you get the stars”. I’m done with that.

My need for perfection is 100% a trauma response. There was a time in which I was constantly criticized and told nothing I did was enough. That I was a terrible person, that God hated me. (Yes this was actually said to me by someone on more than one occasion, and I believed them.) The response was to dig in and be the best all. the. time. 

I had to always be my best. Failure wasn’t an option. If I didn’t reach that, I didn’t survive the moment. There was a chance something would fall.

Not only that, but I couldn’t admit my faults. I couldn’t say I need help, or this is too much, or anything along those lines.

I tell people often that my 2019, and even the years prior, prepared me for 2020. Extreme moments of fear and loss- my children having their entire world upended right in front of them. Add a pandemic in 2020? Pssssh, we’ve got this.

What 2020 actually did was take all of the control out of my hands. Perhaps I’m fortunate that this was when I started yoga teacher training. Yoga, and deepening my practice leading up to 2020, was the one place I could be imperfect. Where I could fail and embrace it. So when COVID happened and so much of the control I exerted was taken away… in some ways it was a relief. Failure was an option, sometimes the only one.

There’s a few things that have happened over the past year that have allowed me to come to the conclusion that sometimes just being good enough is simply that- it’s not about being your best and being ok with it. It’s about embracing the crap that comes in life. And that perhaps failure isn’t actually failing, but learning how to let go.

1- In my day job I work with some truly fabulous people at a school. One of the Christmas gifts we are given is a book of devotions, this was my second year getting it, about letting go. I get to see these amazing children grow and learn and develop, and I get to form relationships with their parents. Let me tell y’all- if you’re ever having a bad day just go visit a group of four year olds! Well, perhaps when COVID has passed.

2- Yoga teacher training. I learned more about the spiritual side of yoga and of myself through teacher training. I thought it would be about hitting complicated poses, and occasionally it was, but honestly the biggest thing I got out of it was that sometimes life sucks and we have to embrace that. And we have to be ok with it. Not every day is going to be what we thought we were promised. If the pandemic hasn’t also shown us that then I don’t know what else will. 

Along these same lines, I’ve been listening to a particular podcast more. 

3- Bishop Rob Wright. The Bishop’s podcast has been amazing and transformative over the past year. There’s a specific devotion of his I’ll cite later below, but listening to him I’m allowed to find not just peace but a growth within my faith. I am grateful.

4- Losing control. Wheeeeew boy. One day, as I was driving, I was thinking about all of this. Teachers are so often trying their best. Parents are trying their best. How many times have I seen both parent friends and teacher friends venting about one or the other? Often times saying, why isn’t (insert other person who we think is opposing us) trying their best? How many times have I uttered that phrase about my kids, about my family, about my kids teachers? 

But the view I have is only from my own world- what is the view like from someone else’s world?

And in that moment I had a flash: I can’t always be my best. I can’t always AIM to be my best. Sometimes- I not just have to be ok with LANDING in good enough, I have to allow that to be the goal to begin with.

All of these things have come together for me to realize some things. We need more radical empathy. Realizing that everyone is just doing what they can. Realizing that the person who you see as your enemy – perhaps they aren’t? Perhaps they are just struggling to get by as well, and it just happens to run counter to you at the moment. But I am NOT the best about this. Whew y’all I am not at all but… again… trying. I will fail and fail often and gloriously. This doesn’t mean don’t try at all- just… adjust your expectations, for yourself and others around you.

There’s a story floating around social media as of late about the parent with the first grader in tears, saying he can’t keep at his work. And the parent realizes… he’s at his breaking point. She tells him where he is is ok. That no one has ever done this before. I think more of us need to embrace this world view in general. 

I think single parents also put so much on themselves- trying to be everything to their child. Which brings me to my last point that helped me get here….

5- An amazing partner. My guy, the one who I crushed on for so long, has allowed me to be vulnerable. That made me super uncomfortable at first, because past partners didn’t like that. “Don’t post that on Facebook” “why do you have so many modeling photos up” “why do you still have your wedding photos up?” “You can’t say that out loud” On and on. It took me a while to admit this to him- and now to the world- but I tend to get anxiety. I am imperfect, obviously, but I also get terrible anxiety. This was one of those things that I was never allowed to admit out loud before. I am so incredibly lucky to have him, and for those who don’t have someone like this as a romantic partner, this type of person can also be a close friend. It just so happens I got my person this way.

I’ve had to ask myself, is this a new thing? The fact is… it’s not. I’ve always been an anxious person. So much of it driven by that need to be perfect all the time. But before very recently I had to push the anxiety away. Force it away into this little box- because embracing the anxiety would only mean being vulnerable. Would mean opening myself up to criticism. 

The thing that sucks about where I live is that it’s a small town- and everyone is in your business. Going through what was made by others to be a very public divorce meant that someone was always telling my former spouse what I was up to, meant that even when I tried my best to block him, the information would still get to him. Would that chance moment when my child happened to have a fit somewhere make it’s way to him? Would he somehow use this against me, threaten me? I lived so much of my life like that for the past eight years, and it’s only recently that I have been able to let that go. 

I was anxious about so many small things. I read a post the other day from a friend who is a therapist and it went like this:

I think this is something that not only parents can embrace, but so many others as well. The behavior of other person is about so much more than what we can see on the surface. You don’t know what someone is battling. And then there is this, as well, from Bishop Rob Wright:

I put these images next to each other because to me they are a part of the same message: we don’t know what someone else is going through, someone’s behavior is reflective of where they are in life, and so often “life and relationships are so hard often because the love we have been taught and practice is fearful, thin, and fragile”. And then also be decentering “ourselves and choose[ing] to learn from Jesus about love, our live with love becomes acrobatic”. For those who are hard to love as well as those who are easy to love.

By doing all things in love- we can also settle on allowing just being good enough- rather than whatever this idea we have of being the best is- to simply be that: good enough. Which is… uncomfortable. It means letting go of so many things that we have been taught are crucial to survival. Or maybe that’s just the case for me? The only asterisk I give this is when dealing with obvious moments of outright bigotry and hate, in which case I think responding in love means standing up for the person being hurt.

Again I have to thank the guy in my life for giving me the courage to say all of this out loud. He is the first and only person I have been in a relationship with- both romantic and otherwise- to allow me to admit my faults, my anxieties, to be able to say them out loud. Part of that also means they have come bubbling up in ways that I could have never expected, and I am so grateful to him and his patience for allowing that to run it’s course.

I apologize for all of my ramblings… this is something that I am still mulling over and thinking lots about. It’s something that drives me to want to teach yoga to kids and families, to teach breathing exercises, to talk more about my own struggles. As a way of letting go and embracing the suck… the suck of everything being not what we want it to be, to embrace the idea of loving the imperfection in everything, embracing that loving imperfection in others and in situations is what God has called us to do.

My love to all y’all,

Molly