My fifth-grade teacher, a creative and loving giant of a human, gave my parents a book about how to improve my self-esteem. My parents said they were doing all the things that were in the book. They couldn’t understand why my self-esteem was so low.
Well, ask just about any pre-teen or teen girl about low self-esteem. There are a mountain of reasons why they are experiencing it. In my case, I also had a rough history. And it did not help that I didn’t understand adults’ limitations. So every time my dad, embroiled in his dysregulated bipolar disorder, had a rage attack and directed it at me, I thought it was my fault. I thought there was something wrong with me. When I was sexually abused, or, later, when the kids at school bullied me, I thought it was all happening because there was something wrong with me. Layers upon layers of conclusions that added up to: I am not worthy.
It was easier to believe that I wasn’t worthy or that it was my fault than it was to believe that adults had so much shadow and weakness, especially the adults I relied on for survival. This is a pattern I’ve heard hundreds of times from my clients as well. It’s a natural conclusion. I realized I was protecting myself from the even scarier truth that my dad and my grandmothers (our babysitters in early life) were a mess of unresolved trauma and mental illness.
So, low self-worth became my inner dragon, a constant battle into my teens and twenties. It was always lurking in the background, waiting to rear its head in challenging moments, hormonal fluctuations, and any time things didn’t go my way. There were days when it felt debilitating.
I was hoping that God would one day reveal to me that I am, after all, good and worthy. That was a child’s frightened but hopeful dream.
I didn’t realize this dream was constantly active in the background. But I was aware that, even after years of hard work doing psychological healing, and after I had begun awakening in my late twenties, no matter how expansive or deep my spiritual experiences were, no matter how big the love, there was some part of me, sitting in a dark corner, wondering if I would ever be worthy.
Finally, one day, I was meditating on my pink cushion in front of my colorful altar. My eyes flew open with the shocking realization that God/Goddess/Divinity doesn’t hold any creature in the universe as more or less worthy. It’s all part of Creation. It’s all one. It’s all worthy.
And that meant that I was worthy. I was inherently worthy. Not because I did anything special, but just because I am a creation of the universe, I am part of life.
Then I had a facepalm moment: I realized that every time I asked God, “Am I worthy?” I heard silence… because it is an irrelevant question! I finally understood that our inherent worthiness is before and beyond question. It just is. I can be imperfect, we can all be imperfect, and still be inherently worthy of Divine Love.
I remember closing my eyes and breathing this truth of inherent worthiness into my body and all the parts of my psyche. I let the soothing waters of inherent worthiness and love bathe the fear in the corner. I let all the imprints of the stories of unworthiness wash away with this truth.
Finally, after decades of battle, my inner dragon broke free. The truth of inherent worthiness landed all the way down in the core of my body. It permeated every cell of my being.
But a dragon that lasted this long often doesn’t go away with one powerful spiritual healing experience. Realizing my inherent worthiness changed the landscape of my inner emotional ecosystem. That wasn’t quite enough. I wanted 100% healing, love, and freedom. That meant that I had to keep untangling threads of confused conclusions from my childhood. It was easier to do knowing that I was inherently worthy, but I still had to attend to the little pockets of doubt in my psyche.
This process taught me something valuable that I still use today with my clients: Every confused conclusion or wound has a very specific antidote truth that it needs to heal, reconcile, or resolve. No matter how true and complete a spiritual experience is – in this case, a big experience of the inherent worth of all of life – if it doesn’t uniquely touch the wound, the wound/fear/doubt will persist.
I also learned that the nature of fear is to keep making sure that fear isn’t real or justified. So it will come up again and again, until it gets the message it needs to finally rest.
I remember tackling each one of these remaining wounds and fears, but I don’t remember what they were all about, except for one that was quite memorable – fear of my limitations. Some part of me held onto a lingering question: Do my limitations make me less worthy? Then, one day, I was walking in the woods at the top of a stunning ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking two valleys on either side. I was marveling at the spring trees, lush with green. And a thought occurred to me, “Limitations are natural. Everything has a limitation. A tree has a limitation – otherwise it would take over the forest. Limitations are healthy. They don’t make you bad, good, worthy, or less worthy.”
I realized that we are meant to grow through some limitations – as a tree keeps growing – and others we are meant to accept, just like a tree will have a certain size or shape. The limitations we are meant to accept become the point of collaboration and exchange with others, because one person’s limitation is another person’s strength. That felt exciting to me! Comparing my limitations and shortcomings to a tree was a soothing balm, relaxing my inner judge and inner critic, and inviting them to go into retirement.
Who am I without feeling I am unworthy? I was about to embark on a journey to find out. I had known the feeling of unworthiness almost my entire life. Feeling inherently worthy and connected to Divine Love and Source opened the doorway for a whole new life, one that I had no idea how to live.
