“You are enough.” The mantra has been everywhere recently, at least in my corner of the world, and I seem to dismiss it as quickly as it comes. Sure, sure. Enough. What does that even mean? Whatever, it’s just another mantra for people who think they’re not enough. That’s not me.

Until it is me, and my ego is bruised by rejection of my business, my art, my ideas, or my friendship, and I fall down the rabbit hole of finding all the ways I’m not good enough.

I see you doing the same thing for your photographs. Don’t roll your eyes at me. You know you do it. My hair is too long/short/poofy/straight/curly. My skin is too light/dark/freckled/scarred/pimply. My body is too flat/bumpy. My clothes are too plain/frumpy.

As the tough-love outsider to your self-conversation, I’m here to tell you to simultaneously shut up and stop listening to yourself. You know who doesn’t care about any of that? Your partner, your kid, your dog, your friends, your family. Not a single one of them would look at a picture of you and say “she shouldn’t have taken this picture, she should have waited until she felt better about ____ (enter item your ego feels iffy about).”

When your kid is old enough to want to look at pictures of themselves (which is pretty early in the toddler years), they’ll just be happy to see themselves in a picture with you. When your partner is looking through photos you made together as a family, they’ll smile to see the two of you together. Your dog won’t know either way. But your friends and family love you for who you are, not how your outsides appear at this moment in time.

You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be in it, with them. You are enough for the photograph. You are enough for your family, even if you don’t have it all together (who the heck has it all together?). You are not the rejection of your art/business/ideas/friendship. Those are all other people’s problems. Now I’m back talking to myself.

Seriously though, please don’t hold out on being in a photograph with your family because you don’t like the way you look right now. Photos of you are not ultimately for you, after all.