Dear Friend,
How do you feel about July? I made this to-do list for summer:
And here’s a second, more specific one for July. Do with these what you want!
I’ve been thinking a fair amount about the origin of the title of this newsletter, and, honestly, it’s embarrassing.
Obviously, I am not the first person to say that something or someone has been “good enough.” There is a popular parenting concept called “the good enough parent” (originally coined by pediatrician Donald Winnicott). For Cookie Monster, who spends every day of his life around the alphabet, the simple knowledge that “C is for cookie” is good enough for him. Apparently, Cindy Lauper wrote a song in 1985 for the movie “The Goonies” called “The Goonies ‘R' Good Enough.”
But I first read it in Good Housekeeping magazine. You may or may not know that I subscribe to dozens of print magazines, to the point where it might be a little bit of a problem. (They accumulate.)
Good Housekeeping is definitely one of my top five; I’m a slut for women’s magazines in general. (Specifically, I love Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple, and Good Housekeeping. A lot of my other favorites folded in recent years.) Good Housekeeping is one giant advertisement; it’s capitalism at its core. The whole premise of Good Housekeeping, really, in that they test products and tell you which ones they like. I hate to tell you that this does it for me; I love the tidiness of an out-of-100 score, even though I know in my heart that the excellence of a mascara or a feather pillow can’t really be objectively evaluated. Anyway, about 10 years ago, they’d inserted the word “enough” after the word “good” in an advice column, so the column read “Good (Enough) Housekeeping.” I have no memory whatsoever about what the advice was; it was something like, “You don’t always have to separate out the whites,” or, “spritz a lemon over your cutting board after using it and call it a day.” It was something I couldn’t have cared less about. But the insertion of the word “enough” affected me.
I wrote the words “you are good enough” on a piece of cardboard and packing-taped it to my desk. I was kind of startled by how much it helped me to look at it. Later, I realized that the word “enough” as a modifier allowed a slightly gentler voice to join the mean ones in my head. I’d tried for years to say to myself, “Sophie, you’re doing a good job.” But the mean voice was always like, “NO YOU’RE NOT! DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS LIAR VOICE WHO SAYS YOU’RE DOING A GOOD JOB! Look over there at HEATHER who is doing a BETTER JOB than you. Look at all the things you MEANT to do, but you FAILED. GOOD JOB. LOLOLOLOLOL I AM LAUGHING BECAUSE YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY NOT DOING A GOOD JOB.” But one day, I tried firing back with, “Well, it’s a good enough job, isn’t it?” And the mean voice had no retort. Because it had to admit: I was surviving, I was feeding myself, I was trying — and ultimately, that was enough. This is how the word “enough” became a loophole.
It was a loophole I climbed through so many times that it became an actual opening. All of a sudden, I noticed there was some space where before I’d felt suffocated.
Now, I have “you are doing a good enough job” taped up ev.ery.where. I stare at it constantly. And just today, just today, for the first time, I asked myself: “What does ‘enough’ mean?”
So I looked it up. The internet came back with: “as much or as many as required.” As required for what, internet? Or actually, the real question was: required according to whom?
So that’s the question, then. For what and for whom must you be enough? It’s a big question, because part of the answer involves figuring out what it would take to believe it's true. Who would have to think you were good enough for you to feel sated?
***
Some “enough”s are simple. Do you have enough money to buy a plate of sandwiches? Do you have enough sandwiches for everyone in your house to get one? Do you have enough people in your house to produce a fully casted production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” What about “Fiddler on the Roof”?1
When Good Housekeeping magazine gives advice about “good enough housekeeping,” the amount required is quality-related. The quality is such that your house is not actively falling apart. For the house to be kept, there should probably not be cockroaches scurrying around or mold growing on underpants. (I admit, my idea of a kept house is an incredibly low bar.)
In Cyndi Lauper’s case, the amount required is crystal clear. The chorus to her song goes, "What's good enough for you/ Is good enough for me.”
She spells the definition right out for us: enough is whatever the invisible “you” in her song decides it is. She shifts the onus of decision-making onto the listener. And that’s fine. A lot of us do that. It’s easier, after all, to let someone else decide; and it makes us appear easygoing.
I respect Cookie Monster slightly more, because he takes a stance. The thing being quantified is letter sounds, and the total possible in Cookie Monster’s case is 26. For Cookie Monster, the amount required is one. He only needs to know one letter sound in order to be satisfied, so long as it is the letter C, which is for cookie. What a beautifully simple perspective.
The “good enough” parent is more complicated, and relates more to my life at this moment, as I am a new parent, and I’m not always sure what is required.
Part of this has to do with the paradoxical cousin of “not enough,” which is “too much.” It can feel like the space between “not enough” and “too much” is practically invisible, if not nonexistent.
For example: am I feeding my baby enough? Oh no, she’s thrown up. Was that too much? Am I giving her enough attention? Oh dear, she is unable to solve basic social problems on her own. So did I give her too much? Winnicott espouses that parenting is all about using intuition and meeting to your child’s needs responsively. Not too much planning, not too much structure; you’re basically warm and empathetic and present, and your child also learns as she goes. Everything I’ve read about good-enough parenting makes me think of the word “soft,” and I’ve realized lately that softness is among my favorite concepts.
While I think that I am currently parenting in Winnicott’s definition of “good enough,” though, I notice that I often think to myself, “I’m not a good mom.” And the addition of “enough” doesn’t scratch the itch with parenting for me, which says something about what I must have deep-down always believed I was supposed to be. A good mother. A sacrificing mother. A mother who does the research then does right thing. “Good enough” isn’t good enough when it comes to parenting.
But according to whom?
Whose voice has defined your “enough”? Since you don’t exist inside a vacuum, it’s not exclusively your own voice. The voice probably belongs to some combination of your family, your friends, your mentors, the media you consume, and the media you don’t consume, but are aware of. Once you have a pretty good idea, I have some follow-up questions:
Does the “enough” that this voice has defined for you feel accessible? That is, do you currently feel that you’re meeting its expectations?
What would happen if your definition of “enough” was “exactly as you are, right now”? What are the consequences of believing you’re already enough?
What are you gaining by believing you’re not “enough” already?
Are you SURE?
I’ll show you my answers, so you can see what it looks like.
I’m hoping to find a new “enough” definer for myself; something or someone I can believe (because my voice is like, “Anyone who says you’re good enough as is IS LYING TO YOU”). This is probably a lifelong goal for me, and I’ll have to keep striving.
But if everyone believed they were enough already, imagine the kind of peace and slowness and softness there might be. Imagine the space that could be made for more than just surviving. “I’m enough, and so I deserve to grow” could be the heartbeat of a belief system that could move us gently forward. When someone leaves you, you could truly believe, “We’ve been changing in different ways, and our roads are going in different directions, and that hurts, but it’s OK”; rather than, “I wasn’t enough for her,” or “I was too much.”
It’s easy for me to look at you and tell you that you’re enough. No problem. How can we do this, too, for ourselves?
Love,
Sophie
Parenting Paragraph.
(This will be about new parenthood. Skip it if you don’t want to read about new parenthood.)
We had to take T to the hospital to get her flat head evaluated. One hopes that the doctor will come back and say, “Her flat head is mild, no worries, sorry you came in!” But first of all, the hospital was enormous, and I somehow got the time of the appointment wrong (I PROMISE I TRIPLE-CHECKED!), so the front desk person yelled at me (no, really, she did — and it made me think about how that has to be a quality you look for in a front desk person; someone willing to yell at people, because people are annoying). She said, “You’re lucky. Noreen will see you. She could’ve made you wait til the end of the day. Then your little boy would have to cry in this waiting room for hours.” (T is basically always misgendered, and I have no problem with it, but I still would like to accurately report the facts to you.) T hated being there, and she cried and didn’t understand why she had to do this horrible thing, because she is a baby. And the doctor, who was really sweet and great and nice, by the way (so at least there was that), said the word “moderate” and the word “plagiocephaly.” And yes, the age window for the helmet is narrow. And oops! Our primary care physician forgot to write us a referral for Physical Therapy, so if we wanted to get a Physical Therapy evaluation (which the doctor recommended), we would have to pay out of pocket. And by the way, we should know, if our HMO doesn’t cover any of this helmet (something we won’t know for 21 days), it will cost $4,533. I have been rounding up to $5k in text messages, but I’m realizing now that $500 is a big difference for most people, and it is for me, too. I’d Googled this, so I was prepared for that number to be $2,000, which already felt absurd. And T was cry-cry-crying, and felt nothing but intense, incredible shame. But also an acute knowledge that this is not a place I should be crying; first of all, my daughter is doing enough of that for both of us, and second, being in a children’s hospital, for most of us, is a reminder of how much worse it could be. And you can’t, as a human, stay all the way outside of that. We already empty ourselves. What about when your child physically needs more than you have? And the whole deal feels impossible; the amount you have to love, and the amount there is to lose. So on the way back to the car, I bought a whole cherry pie from the farmer’s market.
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Also, if you’re missing the link roundup at the bottom of this newsletter, that’s moved to Fridays, and it’s exclusive paid content. A paid subscription costs less per month than one (1) coffee drink, and it’s my sole income right now (it’s so cool to be a part-time teacher!), so it truly makes a big difference in my (and my family’s) life! Through July, you can get 20 percent off by clicking here:
Finally, a discount code for my website shop. Take $5 off any order this week with the code ENOUGHALREADY.
Yes, both “Gilmore Girls” references, if you’re hardcore.
I want those magazines! I don’t know how I would get them from you, or how I would transport them to camp for the students to make collages and things, but that stack is GOLD!
Also, I really appreciate the lengthy meditation on ‘enough’ here. Thank you for giving my brain an opportunity to think about this with you.
i have to say that becoming a mother really has challenged me in so many ways, and i have had to do a lot of internal work to become more like the mother i want to be. and i fight every day against the feeling that i’m not a good enough mother. it’s a terrible feeling. i don’t recommend it. and so i continue the internal work and take deep breaths and write my morning pages and do yoga & meditation & try really hard to listen to my partner when he says i’m a great mother, and listen to my child when he says every day in so many ways that he loves me. but that critical voice in my head is loud and insistent. and i keep trying. i appreciate your vulnerability here sophie, thank you. i feel less alone in this noble fight. 💙