30 Days Of Radical Honesty Journalling Challenge Day 6: When Did I First Feel Like I Wasn’t Enough?

I don’t know when I first felt that I wasn’t enough.

Because, for as long as I can remember, I just… wasn’t.

That feeling didn’t crash into me like a storm. It didn’t arrive all at once, loud and impossible to ignore. It settled over me like dust—slow, silent, and suffocating. It grew up with me. It whispered into my ear before I even knew there were other truths worth hearing.

I was raised in a house where some people—people I was supposed to trust—built their crowns out of my brokenness. I’ve since learned that this is often a result of narcissistic personality structures, the kind that need constant validation and control, and who often achieve it by tearing down those closest to them. I understand that now. I didn’t then. Then, I just thought I was less.

I also grew up with a father figure who barely noticed me. When he did, it was mostly to criticise or avoid. He blames me now for the lack of connection—as if, while I was learning to tie my shoes, I should’ve also been building bridges and tending his ego. As if my tiny hands were supposed to reach out and grab his love from the air and hold it in place, when he never offered it in the first place.

I remember being seven. Delivering flyers in the snow. And thinking—not in drama, but in certainty—that I was nothing. That I should hide myself away until I turned to dust and disappeared, and that this would somehow be a kindness to the world.

That is the kind of loneliness you don’t talk about, because you don’t think you deserve to speak.

Now, I look back on that little girl and all I want to do is hold her. I see how brave she was. I see how much she endured. And I understand, with trembling clarity, that I still carry her inside me. I still coil around myself when things get hard. I still flinch when I hear a voice that sounds too much like theirs. I still struggle to believe I’m enough.

But I’m learning.

I am giving her—giving me—the care I never received. I’m replacing those voices of recrimination with tenderness. I’m whispering truths louder than the lies: You are worthy. You are not too much. You are not too little. You are just right.

And every day, I build a life that proves it.

I am proud of the woman I have become. I am proud of the love I’ve created, the family I’ve found, the voice I’ve reclaimed, the strength I’ve earned. I’ve taken the shattered beginnings and stitched them into something sacred.

I will never again beg for scraps from people who only ever offered starvation.

I am more than enough.

And I always was.

Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe💚