Yesterday, I forgot I was awesome.

I allowed the little doubting voice that whispers all of my inadequacies to speak up and before I knew it, my insecurities took over and started chiseling away at my hard-won self-confidence. And I started to worry. What if I am too damaged to be truly loved and accepted? What if I am unlovable? What if I find someone to see past all my faults, love me for me, and then lose him? What if I really do end up as a crazy cat lady? Am I a terrible mother? Shouldn’t I be making homeschooling more fun? I need to take her on some field trips. I probably should work harder to lose a few pounds. Will this blemish ever go away? And on and on it went.

When my 8-year-old starts playing the what if game, I out “what if” her and think of the craziest “What if” to make her laugh and tell her not to worry about what ifs and focus on being the best she can be. So why can’t I follow my own advice?

As the day went on, I fell into more and more of a funk. I revisited past failures and relived previous griefs. I imagined myself as a lonely, old cat lady with an unkempt lawn and gnomes scattered all around yelling at unsuspecting children as they walked by.

Then I realized that I was being ridiculous. I grabbed my journal and re-read some of the previous entries and remembered how far I had come on my journey. I remembered how I had declared war on my insecurities. It’s a constant battle fighting the uncertainty and the fear of inadequacy – day by day, and some days, moment by moment. Sometimes, I allow a circumstance or a person to send me spiraling back into the endless abyss of fear and doubts.

So, I took a deep breath, pulled myself up by the bootstraps, dusted myself off, and held my head up high. Just because I was feeling insecure didn’t mean I couldn’t fake it. So, for the rest of the day, I acted like I was the most awesome, beautiful, most desirable woman in the world and the best mother ever, and by the end of the day, I was starting to believe it again.