It’s early afternoon. I’m sitting at my desk, in my office on the first floor of my home.
My brain feels chaotic. So many thoughts, but no coherent ones. Each thought spins off into the wind, like the tails of a kite.
Then I remember my Yin yoga class this morning. During the end meditation I had a thought. A surprise thought. One minute it wasn’t there, and the next it was. That is the nature of thoughts. The thought was that ‘I am okay. I am enough. Who I am right now is enough. I don’t need to change anything to be enough’.
It seems like the kind of thought you should have during the end mediation of a yoga class. Except they are not the thoughts I usually have in this situation. Usually, whilst I’m trying to focus on my breath and remain in the present, my thoughts tug me in other directions. ‘What shall we have for dinner. When I was 10, I didn’t feel loved. I must call the vet. What shall I wear tonight? Will the human race survive global warming?’
It sounds trite when I write it here. But it was actually an emotional moment. I have worked on being enough with several clients. And also on myself with my own coach. But I have never felt it in such a profound way before. Not right inside me, in my emotional core.
Nothing amazing happened. The thought came to me. I felt it. The yoga class ended, and I carried on with my day. Which has brought me to this point, sitting at my desk, in my office on the first floor of my home.
There is a scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary, the first movie, where Mark Darcy tells Bridget he likes her “just as you are”. Recounting the moment to her friends goes like this:
Jude: Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts or a slightly smaller nose?
Bridget: No
Shazzer: Well, fuck me.
That’s kind of how the conversation I had with myself later went, thinking back on my surprise thought. My whole life, since around 11 or 12, I have wanted to change something about myself, actually usually several somethings – my weight, my figure, my character, my wrinkles, how I mothered my daughter when she was young, what I included in my daily routine …
I am certain I am not alone in this. I think most women have these thoughts. I don’t know about men. I have never asked any. It would be very interesting to know.
And the things I want to change are not concerned with growth or using my creativity more or learning to make pasta … But rather things I can’t change because they are in the past, or things that would require painful and costly surgery to change.
Why is that? Why have I often thought, up until this morning, that who I am in the here and now is not enough? Is it what society teaches us – that as women we should look a certain way, behave a certain way, and social media only makes this worse? Is that too easy as an explanation? And I did not grow up in the time of social media, yet I have still had these feeling since adolescence.
And I think that men also have a message of looking and behaving a certain way. But I find that difficult to write about, not being a man. But if any men ever want to discuss it with me, I would be more than happy to listen and to know.
I don’t have an easy answer for why we often don’t think we’re enough. Through work with clients I think there can be several sources; early life experiences, parenting, sibling relationships, school, peer relationships, society, culture of the country … For me it was family culture. It was a lovely feeling, being certain that who I am in the here and now is okay, is enough, without changing anything. Will I be able to hold onto that thought? I hope so. And now I know its there because I have felt it, and I shall strive to dig for it and bring it out into the light more fully
Tracy Lamers Parke
.