“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”– Brené Brown

Dearest Wee Beauty,

When I told you that I am on a medical leave from work, you understood without me having to explain why. Instinctively, you have known for a long while that my body hasn’t been able to do all the things that it is usually able to do. You didn’t question me one bit; you just said “thank you for sharing with me, mama” and went on loving me fiercely.

Coming to this decision has felt very difficult, because I have always “hustled for my worthiness.” I continued to work while fighting and recovering from anorexia nervosa; I continued to work while fighting and recovering from PTSD. I continued to work, because who would I be if I wasn’t?

But this time, my body won’t let me. This time I can’t throw myself into trying to do everything for everyone in an effort to try to grasp at worthiness, because my body won’t let me. Physically, I just can’t do most of the things that I usually do. And when I try to do even the most basic of things, my body rebels. Even writing this blog post makes my fingers go numb from the act of typing, but writing is how I make sense of my world, and so I will do this bit by bit with plenty of rests sandwiched in between until it is finished.

Walking inside this story of who I am now is terrifying for two very different reasons. The first is probably very easy to understand: I am so scared because I don’t know what is happening to my body, or where this journey will take me. Once I know, I can make a plan (because as everyone knows, your dear ol’ mama is a whiz at the planning and hopelessly lost when she can’t), but until that day comes, until I have some answers from doctors (which could take a good while), I am stuck.

Stuck in the second scary part of this story– my story. Stuck in this body that can no longer hustle and bustle and do all of the things, because right now, I can barely do any of the things. And while I pray and have great hope that this won’t be the case forever, I am quickly understanding that this is, in fact, an enormous wake up call that my life will end up looking different.

And while it is, indeed, scary to reimagine living a life in a way that is entirely different from what I am used to, a life that doesn’t include my old sidekick Perfectionism, at this point, there is no other option than to embrace this (not so) radical idea that we are all worthy, just by being here. It’s funny, because I have never loved others because of what they do or how well they do it. So maybe it’s time to give myself that same grace, too.

Loving you forever and always sweet bee, just because you’re you. Love, Mama