Today I Choose to be Ample – How to be Ample

My adoptive mother had a special talent for emotional damage. Between her second gin and tonic and her third, she’d remind my brother and me that we were “lucky to be adopted because your real mothers didn’t want you.” I was seven.

Fifty-three years later, I can still hear those words when I’m staring at my computer screen at 11 PM, wondering if the 1500-page policy manual I just created is ‘ample’ enough, or when I’m consolidating financial records for company number 17 and that little voice whispers, “Who are you kidding? You’re not enough for this.”

Here’s the thing about spending five decades trying to fill a hole that someone else dug in your heart – you either collapse under the weight of never-enough-ness, or you become hilariously overcompensating. Guess which path I chose? (Spoiler: I currently manage finances for 18 companies while caring for a husband with an ostomy bag, creating Dutch pour paintings at dawn, and somehow finding time to write this.)

The Overcompensation Olympics: My Gold Medal Events

Want to know what “going overboard” looks like? I present Exhibit A: my current collection of 118 self-help books. Yes, you read that right. One hundred and eighteen. I added four more just this week because apparently 114 wasn’t quite… ample.

But wait, there’s more! Remember that time I decided to treat my entire family to a lovely week in the Keys for Mini Season? I surprised them at Christmas with an elaborate video of the gorgeous waterfront rental. Fast forward to one week before the trip – the house sold and wouldn’t honor our reservation. The only available option? A $15,000 mansion that apparently belonged to a drug dealer.

Yes, that’s cretunkulous (my word for ridiculously huge) amount of money. Yes, we went anyway. And yes, we spent part of our vacation searching for hidden drug money in the walls because, honestly, at that price point, we needed to offset the cost somehow. We didn’t find any, but we did create memories that were worth every overpriced penny.

Or there was the time I walked into my son’s school, saw the Christmas gift tree, and bought every. Single. Present. The staff looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. But somewhere in my psyche, making sure no child felt “unwanted” seemed perfectly reasonable.

The Ample Toolbox: What Actually Works

After six decades of wrestling with the “not enough” gremlins, I’ve developed some practical tools that actually help. Not the fluffy “just love yourself” advice that makes me want to throw those 118 books across the room, but real strategies that work when the gremlins are howling.

Tool #1: The Creative Money Map

Years ago, when I needed to generate income but felt stuck in scarcity thinking, I invented a game. I’d grab a piece of paper and write:

• Find 1 person to give me $10,000
• Find 2 people to give me $5,000
• Find 10 people to give me $1,000
• Find 100 people to give me $100
• Find 200 people to give me $50

Was I really going to find someone to hand me ten grand? Probably not. But the exercise shifted my brain from “I don’t have enough” to “How can I create enough?” That creative thinking led me to start Sunshine Business Consultants. Suddenly, getting 50 clients to pay me $200 for bookkeeping seemed totally doable. And it was.

Tool #2: The Accomplishment Archaeology

Too often, I gloss over my achievements like they’re nothing. “Oh, that little 1500-page policy manual? Anyone could do that.” (Narrator: No, they couldn’t.)

So now I practice what I call Accomplishment Archaeology – deliberately digging up evidence of my “enoughness.”

• Opened a new DME company from scratch? That happened.
• Consolidated books for multiple companies successfully? Check.
• Learned wound care, ostomy management, and worked with wound vacs despite being squeamish to my core? Absolutely did that.

When the “not enough” voice gets loud, I excavate these truths. Sometimes I write them down. Sometimes I just list them in my head while making coffee. The key is to treat them as facts, not opinions.

Tool #3: The Mantra of More

When stress hits and the gremlins start their chorus of “you’re not enough,” I have a mantra that covers all the bases: “I am whole, perfect, svelte, abundant, secure, peaceful, happy, joyful, powerful, healthy, healing, loving, loved, creative, expressive, intuitive, wise, inspired, conscious, enlightened and enough.”

Yes, it’s long. Yes, “svelte” might be aspirational after stress-eating my way through Curtis’s recovery. But it ends with “enough,” and that’s what my seven-year-old self needed to hear.

Tool #4: Gratitude with Grit

My gratitude practice isn’t about toxic positivity. On tough days, I don’t write “I’m grateful for this challenge.” Instead, I write something like: “I am so grateful that I have overcome incredible difficulties before and I can do so again whenever I need to.”

It’s gratitude with muscle memory – acknowledging that if I survived my mother’s emotional abuse, bankruptcy, finding my birth daughter at 52, and learning to manage medical equipment that terrifies me, I can handle whatever today throws at me.

What Nobody Tells You About Overcompensating

Here’s the plot twist nobody mentions: sometimes overcompensating leads to unexpected treasures. Those 118 self-help books? I learned to read them like a smorgasbord, picking up what I needed at the time and leaving the rest behind. I read them as “coulds” not “shoulds” or “musts.” Each book added a tool to my kit, a perspective to my lens, a strategy to my arsenal.

That cretunkulous Keys vacation in the drug dealer’s mansion? It became the stuff of family legend. We still laugh about searching for hidden cash behind bathroom mirrors. My grandson learned to paddleboard in those overpriced waters. My family saw that sometimes Mom/Grandma goes overboard, but it comes from love, not showing off.

Even buying out that Christmas tree taught me something. The school social worker pulled me aside later and told me about a single mom who’d been dreading telling her kids Santa might skip their house that year. My overcompensation became her miracle.

The Truth About Being Ample After 50

At 60, I finally understand that being ample isn’t about having enough or being enough – it’s about recognizing that the very question comes from a wounded place. My mother, sick and unhappy as she was, planted seeds of “not enough” that grew into a forest of overachievement, overcompensation, and over-giving.

But here’s what I know now: She was wrong.

If I could tell my seven-year-old self one thing, it would be this: “Your mother was a very sick, unhappy person who actually did love you. Her imperfections are not your fault, and she was wrong – you have always been enough.”

Creating Your Own Ample Life

Learning how to be ample after 50 means recognizing that we’re not trying to fill holes anymore – we’re building from wholeness. Here are the practical steps that work:

1. Identify Your Overcompensation Patterns: Where do you go overboard? Name it without shame. Sometimes those patterns point to where healing is needed.
2. Create, Don’t Wait: Use exercises like the money map to shift from scarcity to creative thinking. Ample comes from generating, not waiting.
3. Document Your Enough-ness: Keep a record of your accomplishments, big and small. Reference it when the gremlins howl.
4. Develop Your Power Phrase: Create a mantra that speaks to all parts of you – even the aspirational ones. End it with whatever word you most need to hear.
5. Practice Gratitude with Grit: Skip the superficial thankfulness. Acknowledge your strength and resilience.
6. Let Overcompensation Teach You: What gifts hide in your going overboard? What unexpected treasures emerged?

The Ample Woman’s Manifesto

We are the women who were told we weren’t enough and decided to become everything. We’re the ones with 118 self-help books and cretunkulous vacation bills. We buy out Christmas trees and learn medical procedures that terrify us because love is bigger than fear.

We’re excessive, extra, and sometimes exhausting – to ourselves most of all. But we’re also generous, creative, resilient, and wise. We’ve learned that ample isn’t about having enough or being enough. It’s about recognizing that the question itself is flawed.

You were born ample. You remain ample. Even when the gremlins howl, even when you’re searching a drug dealer’s mansion for hidden money, even when you’re up at midnight wondering if that policy manual is good enough.

It is. You are. We all are.

And sometimes, it takes 118 books and six decades to learn what was true all along: the little girl who was told she wasn’t wanted was actually a treasure beyond measure. She just needed time to discover it for herself.

So here’s to being ample – in all its messy, expensive, overwhelming glory. Here’s to the women who go overboard and sometimes find exactly where they need to be. Here’s to enough, more than enough, and sometimes way too much.

Because if you’re going to err, err on the side of ample. Your seven-year-old self deserves nothing less.

Ready to embrace your own version of ample? Start with one small act of “more than enough” today. Write down three accomplishments you usually gloss over. Create your own abundance map. Or simply look in the mirror and say “I am enough” – even if the gremlins argue. Especially if they argue.

Share your own journey from “not enough” to “ample” in the comments below. We’re all in this together, searching through life’s mansions for hidden treasures, one overcompensation at a time.