Dear Enoughness

Dear Enoughness, I once photographed a woman named Mariana when she was a college student at St. John’s University. When she was 11, she met her father for the first time. They went to Disney World. For a little while, it looked like the story she had imagined might come true. Then, when she was 14, he denied she was his daughter in court. She took a DNA test to prove she was his. A court may call that procedure. A lawyer may call it evidence. A file may call it documentation. But Mariana heard something else: I am not enough. By 16, that sentence had followed her into hallways, mirrors, friendships, crushes, text messages, and the fragile architecture of teenage love. So when a boy did not want to be with her, that was the catalyst, but it was not the whole story. For the next two years, every mistake became evidence. Every rejection became confirmation. Every wrong turn joined the case against her. Then another sentence arrived like lightning: Your dad is an irresponsible person who missed out on a great kid. This has nothing to do with you. Something clicked. His absence was not on her. Years later, Mariana stood in front of her peers and told this story with her photo projected behind her. I think about Mariana when I think about worthiness. I think about the ache in my own chest, the one that once hurt so badly I thought it might never leave. I felt it while I grieved my brother, battled insecurity, and asked myself the private, humiliating question that finds nearly all of us eventually: Am I enough? Viktor Frankl warned against measuring another person’s suffering from the outside. He compared suffering to gas in a chamber. No matter the size of the room, the gas expands until it fills the whole space. Suffering behaves that way too. Whether the world calls the wound large or small, it can still fill the soul of the person carrying it. Mariana is enough. So am I. So are you. Robert, PS: This post was inspired by Blake Mycoskie’s new show, No Magic Pill. Hearing him talk about success, worthiness, and the inner work no outside achievement and his new project, We are Enough: https://weareenough.co/ PSS: Want to forward or share this story to someone who might need it? Use the same link: https://stories.dearworld.com/book/dear-enoughness