More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)

by Elaine Welteroth

I’d felt

like I’d made choices that put me in a place of inner turmoil and lack, instead of nourishment and freedom. It was wearing on me. Every day. In every way.

We don’t prioritize our time with ourselves. We rarely set aside moments to be still, to access our center. And the bottom line is, when we don’t focus on our inner light, it dims. We feel put upon, distracted, out of balance.

To embrace an idea that my friend Oprah Winfrey told me some years ago: “This bad thing isn’t happening to you. It is happening for you.” That, my friends, is a game-changing

choose gratitude in that moment, instead of despair. And it saved me. Whenever I remember that Life is for me, not against me, I hear and see and feel it all. And I can find good in every shadow, in every cloud. It makes every day brighter.

A person

whose soul has awakened to this fact is so abundantly aware that every interaction, situation, even blade of grass reveals something worth knowing. And in that knowing, the truth is that nothing bad can ever happen to you. We can see it and process it as bad. Or we can see it and process it as something happening for us, not to us.

In these pages, you’ll find a story of a woman who learned that lesson along the way. Every fall was actually a step. Every confusion was actually insight. Every ...

For crafting positivity as our path. For knowing that the bad is our choice and the good is our choice. And to work to choose the good. Every day. In every way.

Research tells us that, on average, a girl’s confidence peaks at just nine years old. Nine. That pains me. Though sadly, it’s not surprising to me.

The kind of beauty we saw celebrated around us at school, in magazines, and on television had a way of making us feel like the bodies we were born in were somehow inferior. Apart

Luckily, I had strong examples of women of color in my real life who watered the seeds that helped me believe I could dream beyond what I saw around me.

“First. Only. Different.” Being an “FOD” in your field comes with a unique responsibility and a powerful opportunity: to rewrite rules, to redefine norms, to represent for the communities that haven’t had a seat at the table before. But what good is a trailblazer who isn’t willing to leave signposts along the way that make it a little less confusing, less lonely, less disorienting for the next woman or person of color to follow?

scroll headlines and highlight reels, collecting clues from each other’s filtered lives for how to navigate our own.

there are universal gems buried in the stories women never tell.

reminding us of the power of intention setting

might be her greatest gift to us all.

This is my offering to the next generation as much as it is a tribute to the women who have come before me and offered their shoulders to stand on.

because I believe only you can write your own blueprint for success, though I do share some of my hard-earned lessons that I am still learning to live by.

to anyone who’s felt othered, overlooked, overwhelmed, underestimated, undervalued, and still chooses to overcome.

You are not alone. When you exist in spaces that weren’t built for you, remember sometimes that just being you is the revolution.

As you continue crafting the life you want, I hope you are reminded that it is the very things you underestimate about yourself that will help you create your own magic.

We spend too much time hearing and telling ourselves we are not enough. Not smart enough. Not beautiful enough. Not successful enough. Not young enough. Not old enough. Not woke enough. I want this book to be the voice reminding you to say ENOUGH with all that. You are enough. You were BORN enough. The world is waiting on you. Let’s go. xo, E

WHEN A GIRL IS born, a universe of possibilities is born within her. When a little Black girl is born, she is born with the promise of a better future; her life represents new hope for breaking generational chains—of systemic oppression, of discrimination, of abuse—that have plagued our lineage. And it is because of the struggles of the strong women who came before that she is born with the

We are also born with a certain indestructibility that can withstand every one of those tests—if only we recognize it. And it is the power of our own possibilities that keeps us fighting to get back to who we were born to be.

woman in our family ever could: in school, in work, in love, in

the world. She

“We went through what we went through so that you could live, baby girl. So you gotta live. Run after it. And know that we are all with you. All of us—are all right there with you.”

Economically, we were all a part of a similar blue-collar existence in middle-class America. No matter what color kid you were, we all had parents who were just trying to hold on to jobs that promised pensions and the security of a full-term retirement. That was the American dream I came from.

and women wore power suits to work. I

The painful details of that journey are hers to share, but my mother’s story isn’t one of victimhood; she managed to do more than just survive the blows life dealt her—she was always determined to thrive.

My mom and dad were a radically unlikely but fiercely loving pair—two people with absolutely nothing in common except a love for music and an unwavering commitment to their family.

hurts but he’ll change,” I thought.

exit led to, and Rob knew all too well what

When Rob came to pick me up from the side of the road, I was rattled but grateful to be on the other side of a crash that could have claimed me. Grateful for another opportunity to get it right. Grateful for the lesson that life is too short to lose sight of where you’re headed, to get distracted by anything that threatens to get in the way of where you’re meant to go.

she? “Man, y’all need to shut the hell up! That’s my cousin. She ain’t no White

explore, more to experience. When your dreams are bigger than the places you find yourself in, sometimes you need to seek out your own reminders that there is more. And there is always more waiting for you on the other side of fear.

Then she said something that struck me: “You are so much bigger than you even know.”

In LA, I felt electrified. Like there was actual magic coursing through my veins. I was finally waking up to my own possibilities, and to a deeper realization of the power of vision and faith—two of the most important tools I would need on my journey. For the first time, I understood that the bigness of my life would be determined not only by the bigness of my dreams, but also by my capacity to trust that there is a Higher Power who would always take those dreams and multiply them.

To keep moving forward. To keep pushing beyond whatever feels confining. To keep searching for where the magic is. To continue expanding, staying open to being stretched. And allowing room to be completely awed by how much better it gets along the way.

I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different. MICHELLE OBAMA, BECOMING

I wish people talked more openly about just how soul-wrenching transitions can be, and about the panic that floods your system when you’re in the midst of one, whether it’s a breakup, the loss of a loved one, a job change, or any other unceremonious ending or new beginning.

exactly, but

Discovering what you don’t want

is just as important as finding out what you do. —

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

So I’d better damn well love the work. I have always wanted a career that felt like less of a choice and more of a calling. But in order to heed the call, I had to quiet all the noise in my head. And the fear in my heart.

“Send me a sign. Reveal to me why I am here. Make it so clear that there is no doubt in my mind of what I’m meant to do.” Then in a fit of anxiety, I interviewed for a life insurance adjuster job in San Francisco. You know, just in case I missed the sign.

What I was drawn to most was not the magazines she worked for, but how successfully she had carved out a lane of her own in the media world at the intersection of style, spirituality, and Black culture. She

Just like that, after months of feeling lost on a dark, depressing path, it was as if a light bulb went on. If M. Foss helped me find my footing in college, now Harriette had emerged as my North Star, a shining example of how I wanted to navigate the media world. Her bio became a blueprint for my own career path. Magazines would come first, then TV, books, films, and beyond. “This. Is. IT. This is what I’m going to do with my life.”