I Named Her After My Grandma
Where enough actually comes from
“Your truth is your compass.”
-The ENOUGH Principle: Honor What’s Yours
My grandma turned 95 this month.
She celebrated with a simple lunch and birthday cake with family in South Dakota. Nothing extravagant.
When I called her, she sounded like she always does: warm and happy to hear my voice. She told me she always thinks about me. That she “travels with me,” even from her assisted living room in the Black Hills.
She’s been saying that for as long as I can remember. Every time I leave for a trip or tell her about an adventure on the other side of the world, she says it the same way. Not “send pictures” or “be safe.” Only “I travel with you.”
Three words. No conditions. Her way of saying: I’m with you, wherever you go.
What She Passed Down
My grandma grew up during the Great Depression.
Her family didn’t have much. But the way she talks about her childhood, you wouldn’t know it. What she remembers was the togetherness. They didn’t have a lot, but they always had each other.
By any external measures, she lived a modest life. But she measured wealth differently. Her currency was family around the table and her special dinner rolls at every holiday meal for as long as I’ve been alive.
A few years ago, I had her handwritten dinner roll recipe etched into a wooden cutting board. I use it all the time now, mostly for cheese boards. Her recipe holds up whatever I’m sharing with the people I love.
It’s the most valuable thing in my kitchen, and it costs almost nothing.
The Values Before the Words
My grandma never used the word “enough.” She didn’t need to. She just lived it.
Her lessons were simple: treat others the way you want to be treated. Always do the right thing. And the one that ran underneath everything else: people matter more than things.
She didn’t teach those words. They were just the way she moved through the world. The way she asked about your life and actually listened. The way she made a room feel full, even when the house was small.
I absorbed those values the way children absorb everything: without realizing it was happening.
It would take decades before I understood that the philosophy I was building had been handed to me long before I started writing about it.
Hell’s Kitchen, March 2020
When the world shut down, I was in my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan.
Travel was grounded. Comedy clubs went dark. Montana, where my immediate family lives, was an eight-hour flight I couldn’t take. In those first few weeks, the anxiety was constant. The city felt like it was holding its breath.
I missed my family in a way I hadn’t before. The noise of everyone talking at once. The feeling of being in a room where you don’t have to explain yourself.
My nieces and nephews always loved hearing about my adventures. That became the seed.
I started writing a children’s book. A story about a patchwork bunny who learns, with the help of her family, that taking care of what you love is what matters most.
I always knew the character would be named after my grandma, Elenor.
The world I created, My Patchwork Friends, is built around a simple idea: patchwork animals are combinations of the animals before them. Stitched together from odds and ends, bits and pieces. The way children are made up of their parents and grandparents. The way values pass forward without anyone writing them down.
I called the book Just Enough.
Where Enough Actually Comes From
I’ve spent twenty essays exploring what enough means. I’ve written about money, attention, ambition, information, and presence. I’ve quoted philosophers, psychologists, and financial writers.
But the truth is simpler than any of that.
I learned enough at a crowded family table, eating homemade dinner rolls, surrounded by people who treated closeness like wealth.
The ENOUGH Principle didn’t start with a framework. It started with a grandmother who never once chased more because she already knew what mattered.
The Compass coordinate Honor What’s Yours asks: What do you know is true for you, even if you can’t explain it to anyone else?
For me, the answer has always been the same. People over things. Presence over proof. Taking care of what you love.
What the Culture of More Gets Wrong
We treat wisdom as something you have to earn through credentials, expertise, and hard-won experience. We buy books and attend workshops to learn what, very often, someone has already shown us.
This is scarcity versus sufficiency with wisdom.
Scarcity says: the answers are out there. Keep searching. The right book, the right teacher, or the right system will finally make it click.
Sufficiency says: you’ve been carrying the answers longer than you think. Sometimes the work is just remembering where they came from.
A Small Practice
This week, think about the person who first showed you what enough looks like. Someone who lived it so naturally, you didn’t realize they were teaching you anything at all.
Ask yourself: What did they show me that I’m still carrying?
You might find that the philosophy you’ve been searching for has been with you all along. Stitched together from the people who came before you. Odds and ends. Bits and pieces. Just enough.
See you next week.
P.S. Who showed you what enough looks like just by living it? I’d love to hear about them.