Good enough

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received

The best advice I’ve ever received didn’t come wrapped in grandeur or certainty. It wasn’t a call to excellence, mastery, or perfection. It came in a quiet moment during graduate school, when I was sitting with my practicum supervisor, wrestling with the weight of responsibility. I had asked her what we were supposed to do if we simply couldn’t help a client. Her answer has stayed with me ever since. She paused, and then said that one of her mentors had once told her: be a good enough therapist. Good enough to help a person directly—or good enough to help them find someone else who can.

It’s such a simple phrase, almost forgettable in its plainness. But those words cut through the anxiety that I wasn’t capable, wasn’t gifted, wasn’t sufficient for the task. They reframed the work: being “good enough” didn’t mean settling for mediocrity, but embracing humility. It meant showing up honestly, using what tools I had, and admitting where I fell short. It meant knowing that I was part of something larger than myself, and that my I presence—my willingness to stand with someone in their pain—was already something of worth.

That shift in perspective changed not just how I practiced therapy, but how I viewed life and relationships. I can only be me. Not perfect, not endlessly wise, not unfailing. Just me—good enough. Good enough to love, and to be loved. Good enough to walk alongside another person without the illusion that I can save them. There is freedom in that kind of honesty, and strangely, a deeper intimacy too.

As a writer, I’ve carried that lesson into the creative life. The temptation is always there to aim for brilliance, for greatness, for the kind of story that lingers in a reader’s mind forever. And yet, what if my task is simply to be “good enough”? Good enough to place words on a page that reach one person, that stir something, that spark a thought or a feeling. Good enough to give a reader a fragment of beauty, or even—let’s be honest—good enough to write poorly enough that it makes them pick up their own pen and try to do better. That too is a gift.

“Good enough” doesn’t mean giving up. It doesn’t mean ceasing to strive or improve. What it means, for me, is refusing to collapse under the impossible weight of perfection. It means recognizing that art and love alike are not measured in absolutes. They are measured in presence, in attempt, in the willingness to show up with what we have, however flawed, however unfinished.

When I think of the writers, musicians, and storytellers who have most influenced me, it isn’t their perfection that lingers—it’s their honesty. Their willingness to put themselves into words and let those words go out into the world, imperfect and alive. That is what good enough looks like.

And so I try to live by it: in my writing, in my relationships, in my wandering through Ireland and beyond. I am not perfect. I am not extraordinary. But I am good enough to be here, to tell a story, to sing a song, to hold out a word that might matter to someone else. And that, I think, is all any of us can truly ask.