What my 60-year-old self wants to tell my 30-year-old self

In my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I was always reading “self-help” books and making resolutions after resolutions after resolutions about how to improve myself. I spent an inordinate amount of time on thinking that I needed “improving.”

From the Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards' resolutions to Ben Franklin’s scheme about improving himself in his famous Autobiography to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem "The Chambered Nautilus" that tells us to “Build thee more stately mansion, O my soul!” to the iconic drama called Our Town by Thornton Wilder, the literature that I taught my students was often about improving oneself or about how to live life better.

Since I am the adult-child of a dysfunctional (I know that's a word so overused that it no longer makes an impact) or damaged family with a bi-polar dad, a narcissistic older sister, a depressed, and finally rageful, mom, and I was in a family of origin that had moved about every two years because of my dad’s job, I grew up feeling unloved and uprooted. That was what was imprinted on my psyche. I thought that if I could just be good enough, then they would love me, and then I would have a solid foundation (roots) under me.

I was so uptight that I felt that everything was my fault and my responsibility. Of course, I married men with the opposite issues. Men whom I could take care of, not men who made good husbands nor good fathers, not men who would love me and give me roots. Those were things that I had to do for myself.

Now that I am happily in my 60s, I want to tell that 30- year-old-self, who always resides in me, that you are perfect just the way you are, that you are beautiful, that you are smart, that you are an amazing young (old) woman, that you are good enough just the way you are, that you don’t need to improve. I want to tell her just to breath, to relax, and to enjoy the journey. So now I'm telling that to her and to you, dear reader, no matter what your age. Just stay in today doing the best that you can with what you have been given and that will be good enough. God (Jesus) asks no more of you, nor does the Buddha! You will make yourself and God happy! Being just exactly who you are.