Our Different Ways of Being

Believing in our own self worth allows us to move toward interconnectedness, community, and finding the ways that work best for us.

As I’ve been working on this newsletter over the last year and a half, there are some weeks that I send out an essay that is especially meaningful, exciting, or thought provoking, for me. Writing about community, care work, asking for help, and the ways that we value our own creativity and work we care about, I started thinking about the way that self worth is an essential element of these experiences. The ways that we do or don’t value ourselves can influence how we approach the work we do, whether we feel like we belong, if we believe our needs matter, and how we appreciate the ways we spend our time.

Believing in our own self worth is not always easy and straightforward. It can require understanding and practicing self compassion, it can take the courage and insight to turn away from external measures of your value and figuring out what is most important to you. It is a practice that can feel shaky and uncertain when we are putting ourselves out there, asking for help, and sharing things that matter to us.

We are all swimming against the current of what makes someone valuable in our culture. Body type, skin color, skills and talents, how we show up, what we have or lack can easily make us feel that we aren’t enough when we don’t fit the popular, dominant ideas about who and what is worthy. As I have explored the topics of care, community, and connection, I am constantly reminded that the more we can step away from rigid expectations and ways of thinking the more we can value, accommodate, and support each other in all of our different ways of being.

In her book Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges and Inaccessible World (which I highly recommend) Jessica Slice writes,

“The sense that doing life “right” would satisfy me and the fear that one misstep could crumble it all had blocked me from looking at the world and myself with a sense of openness and honesty. I still tend to hold on to the flimsy comfort that control offers. The work of my life will be figuring what is and is not up to me. But, because my disabled body reminds me every minute of every day that life is an unpredictable miracle, my disability pulls me out of my shame.”

Slice describes in detail the difficulty that disabled parents face beyond the challenges of navigating physical spaces that aren’t designed for their bodies. It is also the medical system that fails them and the doubt, fear, and control coming from nondisabled people who don’t understand or support the solutions that work for disabled bodies and families. She points out that these obstacles can affect all parents who have fertility challenges, give birth and recover, or push a stroller down a sidewalk or in a tight space. Slice expresses the incredible importance of learning from and supporting the experiences of disabled people who know that when life falls apart and it is nothing like what you had hoped or expected, it is a chance to be free of all of the ideas of who you should be, what you should do, and how these things affect the way you see and value yourself.

“A central benefit of disability is that it forces a reckoning with our collective fragility and mortality. Disability teaches and reminds us that all bodies need. In fact, becoming a parent is making the decision to love the neediest version of a person. Follow this reasoning far enough and one is forced to consider that it is not clear when and where disability ends. If all bodies need, where does a person cross over to pathologically needy?”

Most of us have internalized ideas about how and what we should be and what makes us able or unfit to do something. We are constantly forgetting, denying, or ignoring the basic truth that we are all living in bodies that need, that struggle, that fail and succeed and not always when we want them to. We have brains that work in so many different ways, sometimes in sync with others, often in ways that others can’t easily understand.

Slice describes the ways that disabled bodies are devalued to the point that doctors may assume that a disabled person in the hospital should not be kept alive because a mind and body that doesn’t work in typical ways is not a life worth saving. She explains the ways that disabled people rely on interdependence, a skill that is discouraged in our capitalist culture, but that is incredibly beneficial to everyone. Discussing ableism, she points out that, overall, disabled people report greater life satisfaction than nondisabled people, while our culture views disabled people as much less valuable because they don’t meet our unhelpful standards of perfection and productivity. She writes, “What it means to be human has become flattened to a list of accomplishments. Our lives are in service of our output.”

Her book reminds me to ponder the possibility of a culture or community where our output and accomplishments are not the thing we are all constantly striving toward. A place where all contributions and all requests are honored and valued and becoming interconnected matters more than being self-sufficient. Where we can learn that our needs matter and we all deserve help because caring for others and being cared for is more important than individual successes that leave everyone else behind. Where the many different ways that we spend our time are truly meaningful even if they aren’t popular or lucrative.

With all the messages that we aren’t good enough, no matter what body or mind we have, it can be hard to believe in ourselves and encourage our hopes, not our fears. Creating this supportive culture that I imagine seems like a nearly impossible undertaking, but we can take steps in that direction. Valuing our own unique perspectives, being open to many different ways to approach life, and letting go of perfection allow us make space for our own self worth and to spread that value to others.

Warmly,

Anna