Am I Enough? Overcoming Feelings of Unworthiness as a Mom

Do you ever feel as if you aren't enough? Do you struggle with feelings of unworthiness? I have for most of my life. I crave perfection, but I look in the mirror, around the house, and in my roles as wife and mom and I see all the shortcomings:

  • “Not disciplined enough,” my reflection tells me.
  • “Not clean or organized enough,” my house screams.
  • “Not loving or respectful enough,” I read in my husband's eyes.
  • “Not fun enough, joyful enough, or compassionate enough,” my child's actions or cries tell me.

If I was more—if I did more or gave more—then my life would be easier. That was the lie I believed, but I always, ALWAYS fell short.

Sometimes life is not quite what we make plans for it to be.

Sometimes we do all that we can, and put what we feel is our very last ounce of effort and energy into making our life look a certain way, and then quite shockingly...the rug is pulled out from beneath us, and life has other plans.

“The heartbeat is fast—166 beats per minute,” the technician told me a week ago in the blue hush of the ultrasound room.

“Is that good?” I said.

“Oh yes, that’s very good—very strong.”

Then he told me to hold my breath and I did, and then released as he played back the sound he’d just recorded—the beautiful “ba-boom, ba-boom” of life, its fluid line sketched across the screen and the baby’s arms and legs kicking like tiny sticks on a peanut.

When I first considered homeschooling, I was genuinely frightened.

My husband and I had been wrestling with the idea for over a year and I had been reading “Educating the Whole Hearted Child” by Clay and Sally Clarkson with a group of close friends. What I read stirred my heart, but I had never seen it in action! I couldn’t escape an image of of a mom wearing a gingham jumper, with exceptionally polite children, who somehow already knew how to read, bake bread and tend chickens by the time they were four years old. Back then I had a shag haircut and a nose ring, and I was lucky if we made it through dinner without one of my children sticking food up their nose. Being from a family of teachers and public school administrators, a classroom was also the only form of school I could wrap my brain around. I didn’t know how to create a learning environment at home and I didn’t know how I would “fit” into my perceived ideas about this educational choice.