Here’s what I don’t think—I don’t think that our childhood is the absolute determinant of who we become. I believe that we all have different skills and abilities and opportunities and that we truly can achieve that which we desire. But what I do think is that there are beliefs and behaviors that we hold that have their roots in our individual history.

Sometimes when we stop and think about the “why” of the things we do, we can see where it came from and, in doing so, we can begin to understand both the reason and the change we may choose to make as we go forward.

My dad was an interesting and difficult man. Married at 49, with his first child born when he was 50, I’m not sure he had ever really expected to be a father. There is no question that he loved us but he was not the dad who would go out and play catch or run down the street holding you while you learned to ride a bike. He was never without a shirt and tie, even when cutting the lawn or putting up the storm windows. And if he went out, even to the grocery store, he was in a suit.

It wasn’t, I have come to realize, my dad’s innate sense of formality and it certainly wasn’t the way we saw other fathers in our neighborhood. It was his self consciousness, his need to feel that he was “above reproach.” Coming to this country as a teenager, working hard to finish school and build a life, he was always hyper-sensitive to being different, to being criticized, to being seen as “less than.” I can see him now, walking by the mirror hung by the kitchen door, checking to ensure he passed muster.

He took responsibility for buying all my brother’s and my clothes, instilling in us an understanding of the need to be “properly dressed” as well as groomed. In high school, I’d walk home from school in a Rochester winter, walk in the house with long hair all over the place and my dad’s first words (he was retired and home by then) were asking me why I hadn’t combed my hair. He wanted perfect in our appearance and expected the same of our grades and our behavior. It wasn’t a heavy handed expectation but it was clear.

I’ve realized, maybe belatedly but recently, how much that need for approval has influenced my life. I realize that it’s a hole in me that I have found ways to fill. I’ve filled it, more often than not, with things, with pretty clothes or another pair of earrings. I’ve filled it with wanting to please and anxiety about the “what if I don’t?” I’ve filled it with perfectionism and expectations. But what I have come to understand is that not only can the hole never be filled but it does not need to be.

In fact, as I look at that hole in the light of understanding—and context—I recognize that it is less a hole and more just a tiny indent in the road of my life. I realized that I have nothing to fill, that I am enough and that I continue to grow my full heart.