That Has to be Enough

There have been many times in my life when I’ve wondered if I was doing things the right way.

That question has come up for me in more ways than I can count.

As a mother, I have wondered if I wasI being too strict… or too permissive. 

What I learned goes back to something my mother told me many years ago—something that has stayed with me ever since:

“If you do the best you can with the information you have at the time, that is all anyone can do.”

I’ve always tried to do the right thing, even when I wasn’t sure what the right thing was.

All I could do was look at the situation, consider what I knew at the time, and make the best decision I could.

Did I make mistakes along the way? Of course I did. That’s part of being human.

There were times I wished things had turned out differently. I spent years going back over those moments, thinking about what I could have done better—even though the outcome never changed.

Somewhere along the way, I equated doing my best with doing things perfectly.

And when things didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I held onto that as regret.

It took me a long time to understand something I hadn’t seen before.

“I can’t judge what I did forty years ago by who I am today.”

I am not perfect. I never was, and I never will be.

But I did the best I knew how to do at the time—and that has to be enough.