I write a lot of tongue-in-cheek stuff about what a pain in the ass my kids are, and I know that you know it’s not all tongue-in-cheek ’cause sometimes they really are a pain. In reality, I can’t imagine my life without them. (I can imagine days without them, and even weeks. Occasionally a month. Two at the most. But not my whole life.)
This morning as I was tweezing my eyebrows, I found myself thinking “Katie and Amber are the ones who made me realize how important a good brow is.”
And that’s deep, deep, philosophical stuff, or maybe not. It’s just eyebrows, after all. Eyebrows are very important to looking good, in my opinion, but in the greater scheme of life, perhaps a good brow line doesn’t rate very highly.
The lessons I’ve gotten from these girls go way beyond brow lines, though, to shoes and purses. And to real life.
We see ourselves in our kids, and sometimes this makes us proud and sometimes it scares the bejeezus out of us. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it is a mechanism for self-love, too. When we see that thing in our kid that we dislike in ourselves, we see it differently – we see it in a very likable way. And if that trait (whatever that trait is) can be so cute and likable in our child, then maybe we should go a little easier on ourselves where it is concerned. Maybe if we can accept it in them, we can accept it in ourselves.
I always say that I’m the most confident insecure person out there. Most people perceive me as confident, and I march around in this world wearing my confident disguise. But you’d barely need to scratch to get to that anxiety that underlies everything.
My body is made up of all the normal things, skin and blood and bones, but I’m pretty sure that 78% of me consists of AM-I-GOOD-ENOUGH. My life is an ongoing quest to validate whether I’m good enough, likable, lovable, worthwhile. And the rational side of my head knows how ridiculous this is, but the other side (she’s a friggin’ mess) just wants you to love me, the real me, all of me, every flaw. And over and over again, I want to drag out new flaws. “Oh, yeah? You still think you love me? Well take a look at THIS! Ha! NOW do you love me? Huh? Huh?”
I know we’re all flawed, I embrace it.
There is a monster that lives deep within me that thinks she is (I am) unlovable. She constantly wants validation, and when you give it to her, she will up the ante. She will do whatever she can to get you to confess that you don’t love her and if and when that happens, she’ll celebrate with “Ha! I KNEW IT! I am unlovable.”
This isn’t just me. I read stuff; books and articles, blogs, tweets, between the lines, and your eyes, some of you, and I know there are others like me out there, those who have the NOT-GOOD-ENOUGH monster dwelling within them.
I’m not sure how to vanquish it. I think peaceful coexistence is the best I can hope for. When I look at my daughters, with all their perfections and imperfections, when I see some of me in them, and I know how perfect I think they are, it makes the monster in me go a little quiet for a time.
Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned from my children is how to love myself.
I can totally relate to this blog post. I found your blog about a million years ago, back when I was married and my daughter was little bitty. Now I am divorced and my daughter is eleven going on seventeen. Reading your posts and now your twitter makes me feel less alone and makes my co-workers wonder what the heck I am laughing about. You are talented. Thank you for sharing and helping me realize I am not the only one having similar thoughts and experiences. I don’t know how to write them down with the panache you do.