It’s often said that we want for our kids what we didn’t have ourselves. It’s rare I agree with the often said, but I truly do wish for my 14-year-old daughter a bubble skirt, a date for the year 12 formal and a backpacking gap year full of hilarious misadventures. I did not have those things, and I still haven’t got over it. Especially the bubble skirt.
But mostly, if I’m gifting her what I haven’t had, it would be for her to know that she is enough. For her to be confident and certain of her worth, at peace with who she is, complete.
“We all have inherent value because we love and create and laugh and feel the sun on our face.”Credit: ISTOCK
I’m not confessing to a chronic self-esteem problem here. Most of the time I’m pretty happy with myself. Sometimes, depending on the hair day, I love myself sick. But this feeling of not being enough has always sat below the surface, dormant, except for when it’s not. Triggered by any situation where the critical voice in me decides I am not as worthy as other people in the room.
Fortunately, at 51, I don’t care what other people think any more (a present all women give themselves at 50, which is lucky because it coincides with when we grow whiskers). But I’m not entirely free of that inner critical voice, and I don’t know that I ever will be. She is the scared part of me who mistakenly thinks that if she holds me back I’ll be safe. And convinces me that I look like the Golden Girls compared to the other women in the room (bubble skirt revisited, you could say).
I have tried to think when this began, because no one is born feeling not enough. Of course there is no one incident, just a blur of life’s influences, from magazines I read to things people said, to that time in year 6 when Lenny Lewis refused to kiss me in kiss chasey, which was entirely his prerogative but maybe the first time I saw myself as unattractive.
If I’m gifting her what I haven’t had, it would be for her to know that she is enough. For her to be confident and certain of her worth, at peace with who she is, complete.
They are all moments when I placed my value in another person’s hands, or absorbed notions of worth and interpreted them through the lens of comparison. And decided I wasn’t enough.
I think every person has felt this. It may come and go, be stronger in some than others, but when it happens, it is crippling.
It holds us back from dreams, ambitions, relationships, and disconnects us from our best self. It sits in our bodies as anxiety, fear or shame. I feel it as tension in my chest, queasiness and a completely blank mind – except for the churning over every little thing I say.
I have one gift I want to give to my daughter – and it doesn’t cost a thing
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03.02.2024
It’s often said that we want for our kids what we didn’t have ourselves. It’s rare I agree with the often said, but I truly do wish for my 14-year-old daughter a bubble skirt, a date for the year 12 formal and a backpacking gap year full of hilarious misadventures. I did not have those things, and I still haven’t got over it. Especially the bubble skirt.
But mostly, if I’m gifting her what I haven’t had, it would be for her to know that she is enough. For her to be confident and certain of her worth, at peace with who she is, complete.
“We all have inherent value because we love and create and laugh and feel the sun on our face.”Credit:........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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