“Not until something challenges you to
rise up, you shall always stay down; not until you realize your enough is
enough, you shall always have enough. When you keep exerting your energy, time
and attention on things which least invoke your courage to rise up and climb to
the distinctive best, you shall always stay at your best with the same energy,
time and attention time on the less better you because of reluctance, ignorance
and fear! The lion that hunts, is always on the move! Awake, challenge and
change something!”
―
Some time in our lives, there is, typically, a time where we feel unnecessary, of no matter, unlovable, a failure, awkward, incompetent. It usually does not last long but, for some, it lasts a lifetime. I can’t imagine me feeling that way for a lifetime. It would gut me, I am sure.
I was a fey child. I was Linda Mae Christianson Tuck or Petite and I was Carol Ann Woolf. I had an invisible sister named Janine. Carol was the precocious one but one with the worst self-esteem. Linda Mae was the lost child within. Janine was the good and best one. See, I was abandoned at birth, my name changed to hide me, and I was eventually given to an older couple by the last name Woolf. Janine was, I thought, their angel baby who died and who I replaced (never to be a perfect angel like their real baby was). My parents adored me and had no idea I felt I could not be perfect enough. Thus, Carol was the perfectionist who gave up trying to be on some wild whim now and again. Carol was intelligent, talked early, read early, minded rules, was very much a people pleaser. I felt shame for being abandoned from my earliest memories. I would try so hard to be perfect and when I failed, I felt great guilt. It did not help that I grew up with “What will people think?” Needless to say, I never felt good enough ever, until I finally left a 19-year marriage that was abusive, took my babies, wrote the entrance exam to get into the University, was accepted and went to university. I did 5 years of university in 3 ½ years and had a job before I finished writing my final exams since the Dean of Education and the Dean of Native Studies accepted a job for me, more or less. I had twenty-four hours to be at my new job. I went and never looked back because I wasn’t going that way. It was enough and along the way, I knew that Linda Mae was “the wounded one”. Carol was sort of “a fringe one” and Janine was the “critical one”. They were all me, of course, not multiple personalities, but, if I were to (and I do) look back to try to learn about my triggers and the “why” of them, it was all, ALL, about not being “Enough”.
I know that feeling “Not Enough” is all about lack of self-esteem, about being fragile and sensitive to more of the negative than the positive. Being “vulnerable” is part of this too. I was hyperactive in that I have always been a type A personality who could work from dawn to dusk and just keep going. See, when you are not enough you are hyper in every way: hyper-vigilant, hypersensitive, hyper-alert for any hint of abandonment and rejection. I learned to reject and abandon before anyone rejected and/or abandoned me. As long as we feel “not enough”, we remain a victim in many ways. We are a victim for others and, most importantly, and sadly, we victimize ourselves. We are judge, jury and executioner of our deepest, dearest Self.
Eventually we feel, right to our soul, that enough is enough and we ARE enough. We remember, we investigate, we root out where the negative esteem came from. Yes, others can wound us. Yes, society can wound us. Yes, we wound ourselves. But it is us that decides to be so. We massacre many of our own good intentions. Say enough is enough, sisterfriends. We matter and we are the answer to some ancestor's prayers. Be that. That is enough.
©Carol Desjarlais 6.27.21
