Are you a member of the enviable group of women who always seemed to be sure of themselves? Were you raised to be a strong person despite the fact that you were born female? And by strong, I’m referring to mind and spirit strength, not the more physical kind.  As you grew into the person you are, did someone give you the message often and robustly that the number of your chromosomes wasn’t a determining factor in your worth?

If that’s the case, you’re one of my heroes.  I hate to admit it, but up until my mid-thirties, I wasn’t sure about my self-worth – it didn’t seem to be a constant, and I didn’t know it was a ‘given.’  It vacillated wildly depending upon the life circumstances I was muddling through, and was particularly affected when the men in my life were displeased with me.  I somehow grew up thinking that men were the authorities; that they would naturally be the leaders in my life, and I would naturally be among the group that followed along – albeit not always whistling happily.

Many of you have grown up with a similar schema; that self-worth is not a sensation that is necessarily distributed equally, but rather a hoped-for reward one receives for being good, behaving as you’re told, or accomplishing a specific goal or task. What’s up with that?

Is self-worth relative and subjective? For much of my life it seemed that my self-worth could be questioned by extraneous people or events.  Being criticized publicly by an authority figure could strip me of my feelings of validity and send me into hiding.  As a teenager, when I didn’t fit in with any of the popular cliques, I could easily feel stigmatized, demoralized, and worthless.  Going through a divorce was a real worth-dampener too.  I gradually formed the opinion that feelings of being worthy, worthwhile, and esteemed came more easily for men than women.  My grasp of worth seemed much more fragile, much more elusive.

Ah, well. I hope you are from the group that from the starting line knew who she was, and daily values her.  After many laps around the sun, I finally got my facts straight, and I now know experientially that worth is innate. Oh, we can certainly behave in ways that will enhance or obscure our worth, but it’s still there inside you.  Unfortunately, there’s the rub.  Learning to grasp, possess and project one’s own self-worth is an existential hurdle all of us must surmount. 

And though we all begin practicing the course as infants, it seems some of us are naturally-born good jumpers, while others need lessons – or perhaps simply need to learn how to bounce.