A client sent me a link to a poem. We had just finished an emotional conversation about dealing with the feeling of not being good enough.

I was at my desk working through emails. Clicked the link. Skimmed it. Moved on.

Later that day, I went back to it. I was curious as to why she had sent it.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”

I stopped. Went back. Reread the opening lines.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

I sat there quietly. Reflecting on my life – business and personal. All of it driven by one thing: proving I was good enough. To show everyone – including myself – that I was worthy.

The business. The coaching practice. The credentials. How I showed up as a father, as a partner.  All built on trying to be good enough.

And here was this poem – Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” – saying: You don’t have to be good.

The poem didn’t cause the shift. It encapsulated the shift that had been happening over many years. I’m okay. I show up. I’m present. I do the best I can. And I can’t control how others react to that.

That’s it. That’s enough.

I went back and read the whole poem. Then I understood why she’d sent it.

The client who sent me this has spent the past 32 years caring for her daughter with exceptional needs. Thirty-two years of trying to be good enough but feeling like it was not enough.

She sent me this poem because she needed to hear it.

She sensed I needed to hear it too.