Mothers.  You are enough.  I know this about you.  I just don’t know it about myself.

What is enough? When it comes to being good, when is it enough?  When we pour water in a glass, we know when it is full.  Why is it when we pour our hearts into our own and others’ lives we just don’t know where the top is?  When it comes to being a compassionate woman- how do we define “enough” for ourselves?  I’ve struggled with this my whole life, and I don’t know that I have alighted on any answers.  But I am clear about one thing: it never genuinely feels like enough.  Maybe there’s a reason “Hour follows Hour”, by Ani Difranco, is one of my favorite songs: “You know every time I make a move I make a woman’s movement, and you know I have something to prove every time I see something that needs improvement.”  If only there were less need, maybe the illusive enough would be easier to find.

I’m not sure exactly how I learned to always be dissatisfied with what I could contribute. There is so much we can’t control. I end up doubling down where things are at least somewhat, and by appearances, in my control.  But the truth of the matter is that no nirvana exists where all the hungry souls are being fed, all the needs being met- and so it is the responsibility of each of us to know when our well is in danger of running dry.  

Recently a colleague was talking with me about girls and depression in our precarious times.  She said that never before in history could girls get the message 180 times per minute (the average scroll rate apparently) that they are not enough.  That hit me hard.  I started thinking about all the ways on, and off screen, we are told we are not enough, even if it’s by our own minds and hearts. It feeds into my giant and perplexing problem.  Unless I could reverse climate change, I don’t know that I can ever truly, authentically feel the magnitude of those 6 little letters.  My teen age students, my adult children, my friend’s newborn: these kiddos dance in my head.  Their joy is a bubbling of heart and spirit.  Their potential is like a rainbow after a glorious rain. Even as my own mother will look to them and literally say, “You’ve got to fix this mess we have made,: (while drinking a Keurig I might add), I feel responsible for the world they are all inheriting.  What is “enough” to me is restoring and repairing the planet on which they live, so that they can fairly fight for all the other improvements humanity needs.  

But then, I realize I am no savior.  I’m just an ant in the long line of ants tending their nests.  And carrying too big a crumb will only knock me to my belly, where I cannot contribute at all. And so, I am seeking a new lens for enough.  Enough is as fleeting as any moment in time.  Enough is the wind, a wave, a grain of sand.  Enough has nothing to do with value, or worth.  Enough is each breath, each smile, each attempt at communicating, each gesture of love.  Enough is a still moment staring into space.  Enough is the will we have to keep seeking, growing, shaping, and shifting.  Enough is the hour that follows the hour, making the river of time in which we seek to leave love in the world.  Maybe winning is making sure when it all disappears, there is more love than anything else.  In that world, each of our enoughs will make the reality that love really does conquer all.