The Road to Value

Photo by Robin Clark
Makeup by Taylor Pyne

My journey with valuing myself didn’t start with this module of Emotional Leadership, and it didn’t even start with this training. This journey really started in earnest many years ago when my adrenal glands quit functioning. Up until then, I had found value in working hard, being good at it, being generous, being funny, being up for a party, and in being a good fuck. Then, I met my would-be husband, my father died unexpectedly, and my adrenals cut out. I was no longer able to provide value to the world around me in all the ways that I had been familiar with. I can still remember Erwan(my relationship coach at the time) telling me, “You have value for simply being.” The bell was rung. That statement has sat with me for many a long year now. I could understand what he meant intellectually. I even felt that this was true for most humans out there. But, for me? I abide by a different standard.

This idea of having intrinsic value started all those years ago as I had to transition from a woman who could work 16 hour days and burn the candle at both ends, ad infinitum, to being one who needed to sleep 18 hours a day. One who gained a bunch of weight. One who was incapable of generating income. And, one who was draining the family’s resources. Upon reflection, I could tolerate that ego death by being a sex kitten (not an altogether made-up part of me) and by performing my domestic duties. Unfortunately, my healing took so much longer than it needed to because I was actively resisting reality. If I could have shut off the part of me that needed to prove my worth, I could have healed my physical body in half the time, literally. But healing is always about so much more than just the physical symptoms.

I had to revisit this material again once my daughter was born, and I could no longer tolerate being a sex kitten, and I certainly was not going to be the only one in the damn house who was going to wash a dish or do the laundry! Now I had to find my value in something other than my sexual prowess, my cooking, or my ability to throw a good party and keep a tidy home. I still was not bringing in a substantial income, either. I couldn’t even rest in “being a good mom”, because what woman can? 

Each of these phases has had me inch ever closer to that embodied sense of innate value — for simply existing. Every time it’s painful. Every time, an illusion of me has to die, so that the real me can start to live.

With this schism(I'm currently at odds with a friend of over 30 years who doesn't seem to cherish our friendship the same way I do), and this module, and this continued focus on my business, I feel that I now—truly—feel valuable in my being.

I am reminded of Inanna’s Descent Into The Underworld. The Goddess of Light and Love kept hearing the anguished cries of pain from her sister in the Underworld. She tells her assistant that she is going to go check on her sister, and that if she is not back in 40 days to send in the troops and retrieve her. Even the Goddess of Love and Light doesn’t get to come and go as she pleases from the land of Death and Darkness—the Realm of Shadow. Every door she passed through, she had to give up something of value, until all that was left was the flesh she was born with. In order for her sister’s pain to be healed, Inanna had to hang her own body on a meat hook to die. She had to trust that her helpers would come for her when the time was right. Ultimately, she had to shed all that she identified with as Self, stand and bear witness to her Shadow, and then trust that she would be reborn.

I feel like I have handed over my flesh(opened up to vulnerability) to bear witness to my Shadow with humility(claimed radical responsibility) and am sitting in the space of Trust that my Light will shine again.