Years ago one of my friends needed to use our washer and dryer. While the two of us were standing and talking in the laundry room, she grabbed a button down, haphazardly threw it on a hanger, and hung it on a hook. There it dangled, crooked and wrinkled. I stared up at that deformed shirt like it was an unequivocal eclipse of the sun, orbiting… right there, over my fitted sheets. 

Friends, it wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years that putting a shirt on a hanger like that was even an option. While having four kids has certainly forced me to simplify, I am still painstakingly meticulous in ways I don’t even recognize. Team, yesterday I snipped the friggin’ coupons off the bottom of a CVS receipt (to cut down on bulk) as I filed it in an envelope marked “Medical Receipts.” I seriously think I have Enough Dysmorphia.

This dysmorphia is the reason I’m in a perpetual state of overwhelm. Not only was I programmed at an efficiency rate of 110%, I often don’t even know the way to 70%, or even 90%. I wasn’t given the directions to Good Enough. My husband, on the other hand, he’s the Mayor of Good Enough. As a matter of fact, it took years in our relationship for me to see and accept how masterfully he commissions the City, and that his Good Enough is, in fact, good enough. The man gets more done in a weekend than I can get done in an entire month.

However, and this is where the tears well up—I feel shame that I can’t hold pace with him, and everyone else for that matter. So much shame that for decades I’ve been willing to sacrifice my serenity, my health, and my self-image, all in the name of ‘keeping up.’ What I didn’t realize until now though is, I’ve been trying to keep up with people who can execute good enough, all while being a person who can’t even recognize when enough is enough.

If I’ve accepted my husband’s good enough, I owe it to myself to embrace my more than enough. I’m going to have to muster the courage to honor my limitations, but also my worth. Everyone is going to have to pitch in. I’m going to start by giving the Mayor more to do—he seems able to handle anything. And the little people are going to have to get off their rumps. It might involve taking fewer pictures of themselves to post on Snapchat, but I think they’ll manage.