worth and belonging
What’s your worth? What’s it all worth? Rumi says, “You show your worth by what you seek.” But what if all this time, all that you have been seeking is already within you? What if you really should have been uncovering the parts of you that have so long been eclipsed? The parts that have existed since the moment of your very first breath. We have all been led from a very early age to prove our worth and to seek our worth. I promise you this was an accident. Purely guidance given by those who themselves have not gotten to the core of their own value. The beauty of who we are when we first began to exist, unaltered and unbiased and before the world told us who we should be, what we should look like and what we need do to fit in. How would your views be changed if what you saw when you looked at yourself was just simply you with no added projections. How would the world feel? How would you hold your head? How would it change where you felt that you belonged?
Not long ago I was in the middle of a pretty bad anxiety spiral brought on by the oncoming holidays, stresses of raising a risk taking teenager in a divorced household and a myriad of other lovelies that could send any of us straight over the side of a cliff. I was certainly questioning all my own choices that had brought me to this point and the circumstances seemingly beyond my control that had me here as well. I have to say, it was the first time in my twelve months of sobriety at that time that I really, really, really thought the answer may have, in fact been at the bottom of a deep red cabernet. Day after day I told myself it would pass and that I could not selectively numb this experience without also numbing out all of the positive and present experiences I was having. Day after day I felt like maybe just maybe the answer was in that Riedel glass of red liquid. Being armed with the knowledge I have prepared myself with I also knew that one glass would not cut it for me no matter how much I romanticized it, I would be left with the same issues on the other end of it. So for a little over a week I thought I had the answer, I did all the things I knew to get though, and told myself I wouldn’t have a drink just today, just that day. Today blended into tomorrow and here I stand having gotten through, the anxiety passed, a new issue on the horizon and 383 days without a drink.
That part was really relevant the anxiety felt overwhelming and I really felt like I ran out of options that I had in my toolbox. It reminded me how often I reached for a glass of wine as a quick fix and how easy it seemed, how temporary. But this particular spiral lead me head first into an extreme sense of unworthiness. I felt like everyone else obviously had it more together than I did and had more answers and clearly more support. Like I was the little kid coming late to the game playing catch up that someone forgot to tell everything that she had missed. I wonder how many of us feel like this. At that moment, I was sure I was the only one and everyone was surely and calmly adulting their best lives. Then I started to feel like I just didn’t belong.
I have struggled with this feeling on and off for large portions of my life, but as an adult it always feels a bit bizarre and maybe even shameful to worry about belonging. Belonging to what? To who? A person like a spouse or boyfriend? Our families of origin? Our friends, who in fact have their own families and needy people to attend to. I’m not sure what I felt the need to put so much pressure on feeling like I, “belong”. It occurred to me that we strongly tie our feelings of value and worth to whether or not someone makes us feel worthy. Whether or not we are made to feel like we belong to them or with them. The two are so blended. And it begs to question, if we could not find someone who wanted to spend time with us or who acted in a way that seemed like they found us valuable, or maybe even treated us in a way that we interpreted as value does that make us less worthy?
So later this week a friend reached out with her own struggles around feeling a lack of value and worth. She struggled with her feelings around belonging and being included in a new family. My words to her were what I wish I was able to tell myself when I was struggling and in truth were so very healing to hear.
When I was feeling unsupported and like I didn’t belong anywhere or to anyone a good friend told me something that I felt to the very core of me. She said, “we really don’t belong to anyone, you need to belong to yourself. “ And as real as this sounds we are ultimately on our own. You really, really need to trust in your heart of hearts that you belong to you. Believe your voice. Support you. The rest you are not really responsible for, the rest flows to you as it should. Belong to you and you won’t feel like you need to earn a space with anyone else, or prove your worth or show your value. Only this will bring true freedom in your heart with no forcing. Only this belonging will feel enough and you can recognize that you are and always were enough outside of anyone else’s ideas. Do not force anyone to do not bend not even yourself. Only then will anyone else’s love and support and friendship feel like enough. Allow, allow, allow. Let it be easy baby, just for today. Just today allow and know you belong to you. Tomorrow you can worry about tomorrow. And then when you have to choose again, you can choose it again. This doesn’t define you, it’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling and if it passes and comes back that’s ok too. Let it be easy just this time. You don’t need to worry about all the times and all the days at once, just today. Trying to prove it, trying to control all the things makes it a struggle.
Constantly seeking for what will prove that worth and that belonging outside of you is exhausting. Know that all you are seeking for is already in you and your job is merely to come to a place where you can come back home to who you already are and who you always have been. There comes a time when you feel tired of searching and you must lay your head down. Make it simple. Look at your palms. Hold them to your eyelids. Lower them slowly tracing the curves of your neck to the very place where your existence is proven. Lay your palm against the wall of your ribs and feel your heart beat under it. Wait patiently as your breath slowly comes down and touches each fingertip. That there, is all you need to prove that you are worthy. The belonging and value and voice and finally the acceptance starts there right in your center and ends also, there. This body is your home that houses who you are. That heartbeat is your proof that you are already enough. Accept it as enough. Something has called you to read these words, to accept these thoughts, to contemplate if you too feel the tug of the questioning. Your shadows, your light your wildflowers and your weeds. The humming of your thoughts and the aching of all the collective pain, calling you to remember who you are and who you have always been.
Cease the seeking outside of yourself. Halt the constant struggle to require that you belong to some greater whole. Know that you already do. Know that in truly belonging to yourself you have already joined the collective whole and been granted the worthiness of all whose hearts beat. Follow the ancient call for this connection but deeply know that all you need is all that you already are you just needed a reminder. The worth that you seek, the belonging that you crave is yours and always has been. I see you.
Alina
