I come from a family of hair people.

Hair is one of our things. It’s important. We have lots of it, always long.

I grew up with stories of my grandmother having her head crudely and painfully shaved when she arrived at Auschwitz. I grew up with a mother who put doing and styling her hair and making it ready for public viewing above spending time with family at home or on vacation. I spent many Saturdays bored out of my mind for 3, 4, 5 hours in a salon while she got her hair styled and braided.

My hair was always long. When I was a young girl, it was a beautiful golden color, with sweet silky curls cascading down my back. When I was 10, I had to fight for nearly a year just to get a few wispy bangs cut over my big fifth-grade forehead. We didn’t cut hair in our family, it just wasn’t done. (A day or two after finally getting the bangs, I decided one strand was uneven and I nearly lopped it off, ruining the cut entirely and making myself look like Frankenstein in the process.)

When I was almost 13 and a week before my big Bat Mitzvah, my mom left me with the hair stylist while she went to another section of the salon to have her hair done. I told Gary (yes, I remember his name) to cut my long hair to my chin. I knew by the time my mom figured out what was going on, it would be too late to switch course. (It looked awful and I looked awful in my Bat Mitzvah pictures.)

By the time I went to college and was in charge of my own grooming and haircuts, it was too late. I was like the baby elephant who thought she could never escape, even without a chain. I knew nothing different. My hair remained long.

I had (and still do) a face and features made for longer hair. Which was convenient, because I had a family that was all about the long hair. Throughout my adult life, I have, here and there, made decisions to try and change it or layer it or cut it or shorten it. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t look right. It isn’t me.

Long has always been a security blanket, a way to hide, a shield. But like the lyrics from the famous song of the same name as this post have always reminded me: “Flow it, show it.”

I remember thinking, as a kid, that “old” women shouldn’t have long hair. Chances are, I would have considered a 40-year-old woman like my current self, to be in that category of old. And here I am, with hair long as ever. (And, I might mention, with far more gray than acceptable.) At this point, it’s long not because I love long. It’s long because I don’t have a better way. It’s long because that’s what we do in my family. It’s long because I don’t have the face for short. It’s long because, in its natural state, it’s too heavy and big for anything else.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nice hair. I always have. It is, still, long and beautiful. But it’s long because it’s always been long. Long is comfortable and familiar. Long is all I have ever known.

I am fascinated by people who….

Actually seem to know how to enjoy themselves in the moment.

Seem unburdened by regrets or anxieties from the past.

Allow indignities such as disrespect to roll right off them.

Know how to let it go, to let go.

Know how to hang on when it’s worth it.

Eat whatever they want, whenever they want without physical effect.

Do the above and never seem to gain a pound.

Do the above and never over-do it.

Spend their free time reading gossip about movie stars, fake “news” about famous people, other people’s Facebook statuses…all the while leaving their own lives unexamined, under-lived.

Go through life convinced their problems are due to the inactions and actions of “everyone else.”

Exercise. Intensely. Daily.

Have no outlets. Not the electrical kind.

Don’t read.

Felt much better after listening to music.

Never look within. No matter what.

Are afraid to be alone, afraid of solitude, afraid of being truly still.

Really know how to have fun.

Drink caffeine late into the PM with no effect.

Drink wine and don’t pass out on the couch after one glass.

Haven’t changed their story. Maybe ever. Maybe never even though to.

Don’t want to write a new one. Not now, maybe never.

Look great with short hair.

Have never colored their hair.

Enjoy camping.

Talk, talk, talk without ever listening. To anyone, or to their own selves. Then, they talk more.

Don’t truly understand what it means to “Do more, and talk less.”

Who effectively separate themselves from the toxic people in their lives, even and especially when they must still deal with said toxic people.

Who employ indifference effectively and appropriately.

Criticize their children because they hate their own selves so much.

Who, whey they care enough about an injustice or a tragedy, actually do something about it.

Live in a blissful haze of ignorance, about themselves and the world around them.

Are so delusional they they never realize who hurtful they are, how angry they are, how wrong they are.

Can’t just admit it. Whatever “it” is.

Who lie elaborately and with ease, to you, to me, to themselves.

Who live on the surface, never deeply, never beyond.

Enjoy being right. At the expense of being wrong. And being, in all likelihood, an asshole.

I am fascinated by all of these people, because I am none of these things.

* * *

(Note from Allison: This is the first of many instances in which I ask, “What’s Your Story?” and get a beautiful guest post in return. Thanks to the wonderful Erin Margolin for being the first to tell her story here! If you are interested in answering that question in writing for this blog, email me your answer:  shareyourstory [at] allisonnazarian [dot] com)

When Allison originally asked me to write this guest post on my story, I instantly froze because I have absolutely no idea what “my story” is. For far too long, I’ve defined myself by everyone else’s stories: my kids’, my husband’s, my gay dad’s and my friends’ stories.

My story is…that my dad came out of the closet when I was 15-years-old.

My story is…that it caused me a shitload of problems, and that it still factors into a lot of my daily life and interactions.

My story is…that I’m married and have twins who are six years-old. They are the result of in-vitro fertilization and years of other failed fertility treatments prior to that.

My story is…that I somehow managed to conceive a miracle baby last year. She is four-months-old now, and I didn’t need any injections, drugs or medical intervention to become pregnant.

My story is…that before I got pregnant with said miracle, I felt on the verge of being able to begin really writing. Hell, I was really writing—I was getting up at 5:30 a.m. every weekday to squeeze in some quiet alone time and pour my heart out onto paper. Then I realized I was pregnant and the first trimester started kicking my ass. And now that I have a newborn, my time doesn’t belong to me—it belongs to my three kids, my husband, my dog, and my laundry room. And none of these are my other stories. Or should I say they only make up part of what my story is.

So for now, I’ve shelved a lot of my own stuff, or what will eventually become my story.

My story is elusive, like my aura; it fades and wafts around but settles nowhere. It’s evasive, intangible, and I can’t grab hold of it. Like a ladybug that lands on my arm, tickling me as she crawls. Just when I reach to cup her cuteness in my hand, her wings stretch out and she flies away into the sunlight.

As cliché as it sounds, my story is unwritten.

It’s unwritten because I’m scared to write it.

It’s unwritten because I don’t fully know or grasp it, or haven’t begun to know how to fit it all together.

It’s unwritten because I don’t have time plunge my hands into the dirt to unearth it.

Maybe it is unwritten because I sabotage myself, making excuses about not having the time instead of actually making the time? Regardless, I honestly do have a newborn, so that is a legitimate time suck (sorry, Piper) which eats up a huge portion of my days.

My story, though unwritten, fills my head in fragments. Sometimes I feel I can’t write it because so many people who are involved in it would read it…on my blog. I don’t appreciate censorship. If I eventually write this book that’s in my head, guess what’ll be in it? The TRUTH. About my LIFE. And if you are too embarrassed about your own story, well then that’s your problem. Because I suppose in the end, my story is intertwined with others’, whether I like it or not.

I am not embarrassed about my stories. They are mine. I own them. I have posted about them. I am honest to a fault.

My story is unwritten.

And I can’t wait to read it.

About Erin:
Erin Margolin is a bacon-loving Jew & SAHM to twin girls and a brand-new daughter. When she isn’t overwhelmed by domestic duties, you can find her canoodling with a book and a glass of Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay. If she’s not writing or dreaming about writing, she’s bound to be microwaving chicken nuggets, screaming at her kids or scooping dog poop.  Erin hails from New Orleans, but her husband lured her to the land of Oz, Dorothy, & Toto, where she deals with daily withdrawal from pralines, poboys, & drive-through daquiris.  Erin is obsessed with plucking her caterpillar eyebrows into submission. She also grapples with residual issues from having a queer dad and getting knocked up after an infertility diagnosis. She loves vampires, carbs, and her bottle of Prozac. You can find her on Twitter: @ErinMargolin, or on her blog here.

* * *

You are beautiful, amazing, brilliant, powerful and lovable.

I hope you know that. I hope you believe that down past your flesh and bones, into your heart. Your soul.

Yes, you are all of those things.

But, well…so is everyone else.

You are no more beautiful, amazing, brilliant, powerful or loveable than anyone else.

For some people, this is an obvious distinction; they are not at all surprised, they know we are all as perfect as can be, they don’t consider themselves more perfect than anyone else, as if that were even a possibility. The equality is apparent to them.

But for others of us, this distinction has not been so easy to swallow or even to acknowledge.  Perhaps there was something in the way we were brought up that convinced us we were more of these things than others, perhaps someone always told us we were better, perhaps we secretly felt we were smarter or more deserving of praise or on a different level. Perhaps we kept this little secret to ourselves, but it informed every thought we had, every move we made, every decision we acted upon.

I know this delusion well; I suffered from it for years.

Yes, I was told how much better I was than everyone else. I believed it. (I’ve also been on the other side of the self-esteem continuum — both delusions suck.) I was told I was smarter, more deserving of good things, of a higher quality than the ‘average” person.

Even now…especially now…this is very hard for me to acknowledge and recognize.

Believing these things about myself as I did, it became harder and harder to understand why certain things happened the way they did.

Why did someone else attain something I’d so wanted for myself, when I was still struggling?

Why were they picked when  I wasn’t?

Why was someone who supposedly loved me so mean to me, so critical — wasn’t I so much better than that?

Feeling superior was, I now see, an addiction. An addiction to always being better, to always being right, to being perfect, to knowing more answers than anyone else. And as with other addictions, nothing was going to change or get better until and unless I faced it head-on and figured out what was driving me to crave what I was craving.

In the beginning of facing the truth of this addiction head on, chances are your entire world will be turned upside down. Mine was. This is the stuff that depression and overwhelm and all those good things are made of. But, well, there is a way out on the other end. And on that other end is more strength and light than you’d had before.

Yes, I was and am special. Unbelievably, unimaginably special. But I am no more or less special than you. I am no more or less special than anyone else.

Despite what my grandmother told me.

* * *

This post was inspired by this quote from Eckhard Tolle’s “A New Earth” and by Paul Gilmartin:

If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave. 

* * *

I looked up the word “enough” in my tattered Webster’s online and here is what I found:

“adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire. Synonyms: amply, adequately, reasonably.”

Being the word nerd that I am, I was particularly intrigued by the synonyms. The same word can have similar meanings to ample, adequate and reasonable? Which means that enough is, in fact, truly enough? (And maybe even more than enough?)

Brilliant!

The interchangeability reminded me of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books: You have the power to decide what enough means for you, each and every time.

Is it ENOUGH? You decide:

Your goodness. Your self-worth. The way you love yourself.

The way someone who isn’t nice or doesn’t have your best interests at heart treats you.

The self-judging bullshit that you aren’t _____ enough (good, thin, smart, fun, chipper, physically attractive, rich, happy — and about a million more).

How much you can get done or accomplish in one day, one week, one year.

The amount of time you’ve put off starting that thing you’ve dreamed of starting.

How long you have put up with someone else’s disrespect or  mistreatment of you.

Enough is about letting go, letting go of perfect, of more, of maybe it needs to be different. Letting go is about no longer pining away for something else, even and especially when we have no freakin’ idea what that something else is anyway.

Enough is about recognizing we already have everything we need inside. Enough is about knowing that the mess we make is not a reflection, but an indication. Of action, of creativity, of movement, of, yes, love.

Enough is, perhaps, one of the only things we do actually need more of: So next time the recipe you think you need to follow calls for “perfect” or “flawless,” why not substitute a pinch of “enough” and see what happens?

I am in my fourth month of this writing experiment. It’s hard to tell exactly what date I started because I don’t think I made a big announcement anywhere, and I don’t in this moment feel like scrolling through months’ worth of blog posts to figure it out.

So lets’ call it four months.

Which is approximately four months longer than any other consistent writing practice I have incorporated into my life has ever lasted. Sure, I have been writing all of my life. My professional life is based on writing, too. But this writing — with no expectation (even on those days when I wonder where all the comments went or if anyone is reading) — is different. It is not for a paycheck or payday, not for something that will come to completion and be done with, not for someone else. It is for me, I am certainly not getting paid for it (though I’d be open to negotiation on that one) and I don’t know when (or if) it will end and what (if anything) will come of it.

It just is.

Which is both freeing and annoying. And scary, too. I like to do things with purpose and things that can easily, once complete, be crossed off a list and moved on from. This project or experiment or thing is none of those things. I don’t know what it is, and I have tried to not define it beyond what it actually is. 

So despite or perhaps because of the absence of expectation, amazing things have already come up over these past months. New projects I am now working on, older projects I was scared to continue with have been revitalized, still others have been tossed and let go forever. Amazing new clients have come into my life. New branches of my core business offerings have come to light, and I see the potential for long-term projects that are incredibly rewarding on multiple levels. Projects that I care about and that enable me to pay my bills. 

My internal healing has reached a new level. I see so much more. About myself. So much to be acknowledged and healed. These days, I look at where my time and energy and attention go — what people, what relationships, what thoughts, what activities — and I am really fucking pleased with myself. I like to see so much progress.

I see space where there once was none.  I see possibility.  I see opportunities for more healing, more love. I find myself walking away from people looking to fight, looking to spread their anger. I find myself with more compassion and less anger back at them. I find that the more I practice this, the more they simply don’t come around and bother me anymore. I find that hanging up the phone on someone who is yelling at me is a perfectly acceptable response. I find that verbal abuse doesn’t have to be my problem.I find that I now have the strength and courage to resolve issues that I tried to ignore in the past. And to seek help where I can’t do it all by myself.

I find that the more I write, the more I love myself, and the more I love myself, the more amazing things happen. Period. 

Don’t get me wrong: I am still as much of a mess as the next girl (or guy). But these days, I like myself a whole lot better and am OK with all of it. Not in every moment, but in more moments than not.

Call it woo-woo or too Secret-y. Call it whatever you want. All I know is that since I started my writing experiment, my life has changed.

What about YOU? What is the equivalent of writing for you? Are you doing it regularly?

* * *

I love how you feel fear and doubt and uncertainty, yet you forge ahead anyway.

I love how you’ve gone hours before realizing you have something green and leafy wedged in-between your two front teeth.

I love when you realize that “should” and “supposed to” aren’t in charge of your life. At least not anymore.

I love how you hit the snooze button over and over again, finally waking up nearly an hour after your alarm went off.

I love how you don’t always pretend that things are perfect. That you aren’t afraid to admit when work sucks or your kids are annoying you.

I love how you dream about weird stuff that you can never remember when you do wake up.

I love how your laugh lines show when you smile.

I love that look in your eyes, I can’t tell if it is mischief or wistfulness. Or something else.

I love how you love to be alone. I love how you get off on being the center of attention.

I love all of your little quirks and habits, even the weird ones. You know which ones I’m talking about.

I love how you read blogs, tweet and hang out on Facebook when you have so many other things you “should” be doing.

I loved the time you did that thing no one thought you’d do. And you did it so awesomely.

I love the way you sometimes wait instead of going for it. That’s ok.

I love how you make mistakes. So many of them.

I love that you had the guts to leave behind what wasn’t working for you, to stand up for yourself, to stop settling. I think you know what I am talking about.

I love how you decided you won’t put up with that crap anymore. And you haven’t.

I love how you think you can control things. It’s cute. Delusional and ineffective, but cute.

I love how your hair looks on bad hair days.

I love how you look when you wear that color.

I love how you finally let that person go in your life. You were right to do that, it wasn’t working.

I love that some days you go without showering. No makeup. No bra. Day-old clothes. The whole nine yards.

I love how badly you messed up that thing that you messed up.

I love how you tell yourself these stories as if they were real. You know, the ones about you not being good enough or doing enough.

I love how messy and imperfect you are. And imbalanced, too.

I love who you are. Including the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.

I love that you’re not sure if I am really talking to you in this post. (I am.)

I love what I know you are headed toward.

I love where you’ve been. Even, especially, the sucky parts.

I love that you see yourself in this list. Because I wrote it for you.

There was a long period of time during which I prided myself only on how much I could get done, on the amount of work I could complete in any given day or week, on how many days’ worth of To-Dos I could fit into one measly day. On pleasing, pleasing, pleasing and doing, doing, doing.

I was a hamster on a wheel, busting my ass to get to a destination, a finishing point, a place of being done, that would never come.

It was tiring. And hard. And unsustainable physically, mentally, emotionally. It was a lose-lose situation in which no matter what happened, I had to keep going and do more, more, more.

Sometimes, sure, there was a payoff, a reward: I’d make a ton of money. I’d win an award.  I’d get a heartfelt compliment from a client or colleague. These things fueled me enough to keep going on what I thought was the right path. 

“Women who do too much do it because of the payoffs. As in any addictive process, we build up a tolerance. The more we do, the more we have to do in order to get high.”
~From “Running on Empty” by Ellen Sue Stern

Doing too much was my way of getting high. Throw in some crappy eating habits and someone who barely ever drank, who didn’t take drugs and who was in a unfulfilling marriage I was sure I could fix, and you have a recipe for some hardcore hamster wheel action.

Getting lots done was my drug, work was my primary relationship, feedback was my love.

I wasn’t happy, I was addicted.

Of course, inevitably, eventually, I burned out. It wasn’t an explosion I can poinpoint and say, “That was it. That was the day everything came to a a head and I knew things had to change.” 

No, it was a slow burn.

* * *

Symptoms of a slow burn are different for different people. It is likely harder to recognize than an all-out burnout and yet, perhaps, ultimately more cruel on the physical body and on the soul. 

For me, physically, I never felt rested, never felt that my sleep — even 8 or 10 hours of it — was enough. I turned to foods that eventually made me feel worse with the hope that they’d make me feel better. I wasn’t happy with many the relationships I was in. I always felt a sense of longing — for more, for better, for different. It was never enough. I was never enough for me. Instead of a sense of unconditional self-love or total acceptance and radical belief in myself, I had a chronic sense of self-criticism, of an inner turmoil about how good or worthwhile I really was, a “you can do better” approach to every result I produced.

Did I mention how tiring all of this was? Did I also mention how totally unsustainable all of this is over time?

Since those hamster wheel days, I have worked hard to treat myself in a way that is loving and productive in a totally different way. It is a recovery of sorts. And it isn’t always easy. When you strip away the things you thought made you feel comfortable and safe and maybe even high, whether food or people or work or drugs or anything else, all that is left is yourself.  Your naked self. And sometimes, facing yourself after all that time of shielding and hiding feels raw, weird, uncomfortable, unmanageable.

But the weirdness is OK. The weirdness is your sign that you are on the right track. The weirdness is the place where you will, in your own time, find the love that will fuel you unconditionally and without end.

It’s all already there, everything you need and want is already in you. I have no doubt you can and will find it. I’ll be rooting for you.

I’ve been trying to be more grateful in my thoughts and beliefs.

It seems like every other minute I am off on an internal tangent. I find it easier to snap out of it and come back to a better perspective of reality when I focus less on what I was actually thinking about and more about acknowledging in a grateful way how I got there, what allows me to even have that problem/issue and, usually and how I have so many options, solutions and possible ways out of it.

As I fall asleep each night, I become aware of all 10 raised fingers. One-by-one, I list what I feel grateful for in that moment, and one-by-one each finger goes down until I have acknowledged 10. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds, sometimes a minute or two. Either way, there is never, ever a shortage of items to tick off finger-by-finger.

It’s quick and it works. Sometimes I make myself laugh (like the night I listed toilet paper or tampons). Or feel like crying, when I list people I love who aren’t here anymore, like my Bubby, or times and places I’ll never see or touch again, like the house I grew up in. Or wistful, when I think of how my kids go back and forth between two houses, but grateful that they have two parents who love them, that their parents live so close to each other and  that they have not one but two warm, safe and crazy bedrooms.

Sometimes I try to be specific, like instead of listing my dog and being done with it, I list something specific my dog does, like how excited she is every morning, as if it were her first time ever, when we go to wake up each kid, me taking the verbal duties and her on top of the kid-sniffing responsibilities.

Some nights, I feel blah or as if I didn’t have the kind of day I’d wanted to have. Those are the best times to do the 10-finger exercise. One night, I was thinking about the dents on my car and how,when my lease is up later this year, I will likely have to pay big time for the damage. I quickly turned it around as I thought how grateful I was to have such a car and to be able to make my monthly payments, drive anywhere I wanted to go anytime and not have to worry about my relatively young car breaking down or not starting.

Sounds super-simple because it is. It’s not magic and there is no secret. It’s also quick as hell, almost instant, really. Your bad and annoying and frustrating stuff isn’t going away, but that doesn’t mean there is only one way to look at it. Oh, and it’s also sugar-free, gluten-free and allergen-free. And it’s free-free and in it doesn’t cost you a thing.

All you need is your 10 fingers (or however many you have and having all 10 is something to be grateful for, too) and a minute or two.

Try it.

And thank you for reading this

Before I had kids, I’d  heard all the stories. Everyone has them, and sometimes too many of them will share ‘em with you. Lots of them. About childbirth, bottles vs. the breast, sleeping, pooping, bathing, feeding, Onesies…you name it, someone has a story (or 10) for you.

It can be scary in those early days, but everyone gets through it. We’re better for it. Stronger. Newly-wired to multi-task like no other sub-set of our human species. Able to exist on less sleep afterwards. We may even become so comfortable (and forgetful) that we have another one or two (one’s so much fun, let’s do this again!). Why not, we’re so good at this, right?

Years go by. Eventually, they begin to do more and more for themselves. Awesome, they feed themselves now! They make their way to a toilet and we don’t even have to know about it or care what comes out. They can be left alone, awake in a room without fear of swallowing small plastic or anything with an electrical current running through it. They sleep all night and sometimes even wake up in the morning after we do. As Anna Quindlen once wrote, they “miraculously go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.“

Wow, this sure got easier, huh?

But then they become teenagers.

We think we are prepared. Nothing to this. At this point, we’re parenting pros.

But, well, it’s different. Deeper, somehow. The changes are internal, subtle. It’s more bittersweet than joyous. Introspective. Weird.

OMG I wasn’t ready for this.

I’m no different than the rest, though maybe I thought I was. I’ve been asked not to talk when friends are around the house or in the car with us. To not sing along with any music. To observe complete silence within 100 feet of the school or the car drop-off line. To not, under any circumstances, yell out any messages or reminders once the car door is open and school drop-off has begun. To not take pictures of them. Or of their friends. And the list goes on…

They’d rather be hanging out with a friend than with me. That, I get. They’d rather be on Facebook or alone in their room than with me. That one, harder to swallow. They are both taller than I am. That, I expected. They sleep until noon on non-school days. That annoys me.

Instead of worrying about stepping on errant Legos, I stalk Facebook walls. They request enough bath and hygiene products for an army. I get shot down when I ask why this or what’s that for. We have more Mac cords and Kindle chargers and App Store logins than I can keep track of. I’m told regularly “We have nothing to eat in this house!” and suddenly no one much cares that I’d like them to eat more fruits and vegetables. A recent “shopping list” they left for me read something like this: “Diet Dr. Pepper, purple Doritos, Cheeze-its, roast beef, cantaloupe (if you want mom), icing.” (The latter was to have been eaten separately, alone and had no baking purpose. I did not buy it.)

These days, leaving them alone in their room is more scary than ever. They literally have access to the entire world (and the entire world to them) from that little box with a plug that allows them to talk, chat, “VC” (that’s Video Chat for you people so not in the know!), update on Life Profile and tumble (they go to Tumblr because all the parents are on Facebook). Thinking it is possible to be in control of a teenager at all times is a delusion.

All too suddenly, swallowing a plastic toy seems like a danger I can manage. Instant direct access to all of the world? Not so much.

I expected it, yes.

It’s normal, yes.

It isn’t personal, no.

I have an identity gives me meaning beyond my kids, yes. A rich one, as a matter of fact.

But it still hits me like a ton of bricks. Over and over again on some days.

When your child walks for the first time, the joy of just beginning is so pure and real. When your child begins to walk away for the first time, the realization of what’s to come, of how instantly things change and of how fast time really does move can be overwhelming.

Watching your kids grow up, really grow up, can take your breath away and break your heart all at once.

* * *