I’m embarrassed to admit the ways I have experienced feeling unworthy or being not good enough. I don’t like to seem like I don’t have it all together. But I’m pretty sure everyone experiences self-doubt. I will try not to shame myself too much for the things I’ve felt even though they may seem shallow; they are honest. 1. I have felt in the past that I was not worthy of a significant other that has money if I didn’t [...]
I faced a life sentence at 18 years old. Being a young man at the podium, and awaiting sentencing with the possibility of a maximum term of life in prison, hits hard. I was standing there in tears over the idea. Analyzing the number of lost life experiences and relationships and the scary idea of what was to come. Miraculously, I was granted a second chance at life, and I was graced with a sentence of 112 months in WA [...]
When I originally went to write I wanted to write about my experience as a Black woman in America. I wrote something else instead. Mostly because I am fearful. Fearful of how it will be received; you know, ‘you’re playing the race card’ or ‘Black people can be racists too’. Comments we hear when those receiving it are too ignorant or too comfortable with their privilege they can’t accept another’s reality. The reality is, collectively, White people are not [...]
I cuss. I cuss a lot. My husband calls me trucker-mouth mama. Sometimes, I use it too casually, which doesn't have as much impact as I would like it to. It was a life-saver of sorts. It came into my life at a time when I struggled to express myself to the outside world, and it also gave me permission to say how I felt, even if it was just in the privacy of my room as a 7-year-old [...]
For me “not-enoughness” is something I have to bring awareness to consistently in my life. I am a marriage and family therapist, single mommy, single in general (lol), and just turned 40 years old. For starters being a single mom at 40 in the United States you constantly get “oh no what happened”. The looks from other married moms of “poor girl”. Dating men comes with the assumption that you’re hunting for a husband and ready to wed the [...]
When I decided to share my story on self-love and healing I wasn’t sure where I would begin because I am still on the journey currently. I think we all have had some sort of trauma in our life, either from childhood or as we become adults and meet people that we date or friends that let us down. Whatever that means for you. Life can be really hard sometimes. I grew up thinking if I could just live [...]
Ways unworthiness has shown up in my life are numerous: jobs, wonderful opportunities and the most painful of all: relationships! Over a period of about four years, I struggled with romantic partnerships. So much so, that I had stopped dating for two years so I could unravel the knot I felt I had gotten myself into. After many failed partnerships, I felt I was to blame. Somehow I was attracting partners that perpetuated feelings of unworthiness and that I wasn’t loveable. [...]
I was born in the Czech Republic while my country was occupied by the Soviet Union. I came from many generations of hard and tough people with a very standoffish attitude. A good example of this is that my parents never told me that they love me because this was not part of our culture. My mother was unconsciously riddled with anxieties and fears and my father always gave me a feeling that I wasn’t good enough. His way [...]
If you had told my parents when I was a kid that I would grow up to become a drug addict and alcoholic, they would have not believed it. In fact, when I called and told them at the age of 31 that I was a drug addict and alcoholic and that I was starting my journey in sobriety, they didn’t believe me. This was because I was very good at hiding my addiction. I was a very happy child. [...]
My Ballet Life: Ballet was something I inherently knew I wanted to do very early in life. Although I tried other forms of dance and musical theater as a child, I knew in order to get anywhere with ballet, I would have to make it a priority. And so from 15 years old on, I made it my top focus, with school being a close second. Hours a day were spent training in a studio where tights and leotards were [...]
