Worthiness & A Legacy to My Daughter

As a child, I was “blessed” with an overwhelming sense of compassion for others; as I grew older that was unfortunately paired with indescribable feelings of worthlessness.

I pretty much assured my place at the bottom of my own priority list.

All of my relationships (be they familial, friendships, intimate relationships) have all felt one-sided, with me feeling like I care more about them than they do me. Of course this was (is) never the case, but my deflated self-esteem convinced me I was the lesser important of the two, and so my own happiness remained low on the list.

This terrifies me.

Why can’t I be as important to others as they are to me? Why is everyone else more important to me than I am? What will happen to me if I get lost? Who will come and find me, and pull me out of myself long enough to tell me how wrong I am?

The idea comes, frequently, that if I just stood up for myself and demanded more from the people in my life, I could finally be happy. If they would just put me in a place of priority in their lives, I would feel worthy and loved.

That terrifies me too because none of it is true.

The longing I feel isn’t for them: it’s for me.

That love for myself is there, buried. I feel it rise when I sever the strings that bind me to the approval of others. It comes up in the advice I give to friends about loving themselves first, to question why I don’t.

When I read a heart-wrenching story instead of skipping past, I know it is because I need to hear the words. Things pop up in my social media timelines right when I am at a place in my life to hear the message.

I believe in these ‘coincidences’. I believe that things pop up in our lives at just the right time simply because our eyes are finally open to seeing and hearing what was there all along.

I have a baby daughter now, born when I was 38 years old. Some people say that is late, I say it is exactly the right time; any sooner and she would have been saddled with a mother who lacked the awareness to see her own self-destructive path for what it was.

I am filling my bucket, one drop at a time. With each drop comes a little more freedom, a little more happiness, and a little less confusion about my place in my partner’s heart. I am sure he is relieved by the decrease in irrational demands for his love and attention too, so win-win.

It is my duty as my daughter’s mother to be good to myself, and to teach her by example how to keep her own bucket filled, right from the beginning.

More than just obligation to my daughter, though: I want to love myself first. I am ready to release my partner from my impossibly high standards, and I am at last willing to do the same for myself.

I know I will still have these feelings of worthlessness, at times, but I am armed now; they won’t rule me anymore. I will replace these feelings with declarations of my own value until one side drowns out the other, and I no longer listen to the voice that brings me down. I will oust this woman who thinks she is worthless as anything other than a mother and wife, and replace her with someone who loves herself for all that she is.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, as neither did this worthlessness happen in a day.

Finally, I will be as kind to myself as I am to everyone else.