Worthiness. What does it really mean to be worthy? Why is it so important? These questions and others like it have been rolling around in my brain for weeks. As a self-care coach and mentor to women it is my honor and privilege to help women realize and grasp their own inherent self-worth. After all, self-love and self-worth are necessary for one to dive deep into self-care. Isn’t that the foundation and driving force behind wanting to care for and connect with oneself on a deeper level? I believe it is!
What I am figuring out is that loving yourself and feeling worthy is not and end point goal. What do I mean by that?
I mean that worthiness is a journey and not a destination.
It is an experience that changes in look and feel daily. Just like a river, it ebbs and flows. Just when you think you have it nailed, you turn around to find that you don’t. One day you can bask fully in feeling you are enough and you are worthy and the next you can sense this elusive feeling slipping away.
There is a saying that we teach what we have come to learn. Oh how true this is.
I often see my own struggles mirrored back to me by the women I work with. I am in no way void of the difficulties and issues that my clients have. I am human. I am working and feeling my way through my own journey.
Recently I have felt totally blocked. I could not put my finger on what it was or where it was coming from, but it was like my creativity and inspiration tap was turned off. No motivation. No new ideas. After much soul searching and meditation, I came to realize that it was coming from a place of feeling unworthy.
Who am I to put my writing out there for the world to see? Who am I to coach other women? Who am I to shine my light so brightly in the world?
My coach and I did a meditation and exercise to try to get to the bottom of this feeling. She asked me, “When was the first time you remember feeling unworthy?” Immediately I saw myself, 5 years old, sitting on the bathroom floor at our house. My mom was changing the bed that I shared with my sister because I had, yet again, wet the bed. I felt embarrassed and unworthy. I was recovering after having been in a cast from my chest down to my toes on my left side for many weeks. I had reconstructive hip surgery. At the age of 5 I had to be re-potty trained. My 5 year old self did not register that this was part of the healing process.
After this session I did not trust that this memory could have anything to do with my feelings of unworthiness. I just didn’t seem like that big of a deal or that profound an experience. My 44 year old self could not fathom had this could be so important. Fast forward a couple of weeks to a Reiki training I was participating in. My teacher was doing Reiki on me. Afterwards she told me that she felt stuck energy in my lower back, around L5. She said her sense was that there was something stuck there that happened around age 5. Well, given that she knew nothing of what I had experienced with my coach, I decided that I should have in fact trusted my memory and what came up for me.
What I have learned is that our feelings of unworthiness can have deep roots. As young children we do not have the discernment to know what constitutes an event worthy of life long feelings of unworthiness.
We feel what we feel and that can become part of our belief system.
I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to realize what I had internalized and work to heal that. I can see now that there was no reason to feel unworthy. I was just a little girl who was going through a lot.
I share this because I talk with women all the time who struggle with self-worth, loving and accepting themselves. I believe that knowing we are not alone and that we all fight the same battles can be reassuring and healing. I feel grateful that the days where I know I am enough and worthy of deep, nurturing self-care are now much more numerous than those when I do not. I wish you well on your journey to self-love and worthiness. Please know that you are worth it and you are enough.
“Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left is undone, I am enough.” – Brene Brown
Love and light.
Angie