When you Tell a Child she is Worthless, she will Believe you.

When you tell a child she is worthless, she will believe you. She may spend the rest of her life proving you right. She may find ways to punish, sabotage and otherwise harm herself to reinforce her feelings of inadequacy, shame and guilt. She may learn to live with her breath half-held- unable to pursue the things she wants most because she doesn’t feel worthy of them.

I know this because I lived it.

I’m certain my parents had no idea how powerful their words were. I’m certain they did they best they could with the circumstances they were given. I’m certain my parents loved me, and meant me no harm.

I’m also certain that my parents damaged me profoundly, and forty years later, I’m still healing.

To be fair, my parents didn’t have it easy. There were many challenges in their lives- schizophrenia and poverty being two big ones. And to be honest, I was kind of a pain in the ass. I was an outspoken little truth teller even as a kid. I was smarter than my parents, more capable, more eager to change and fix things I saw crumbling around us. I spent a lot of time telling them what was wrong with our lives, and they spent a lot of time telling me to shut the hell up and leave them alone.

I can summarize my formative years in a few memories:

I was sexually abused at age three. When I told my mother, she didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. My abuser was invited into our home for decades to follow, while she pretended nothing happened.

I was in my aunt’s wedding at age four. When we picked up my flower girl dress from the very fancy dress shop, I couldn’t wait to show my daddy. I raced across my grandmother’s lawn to tell him to come see when we got home. He looked up from his bottle and told me to go show my mother.

I was degraded as a female the first time I heard my father call my mother a cunt. When they weren’t tearing each other down, they were telling me what a waste of space I was. They predicted that I would fall flat on my face if I ever tried to leave that place- I’d never amount to anything, I’d never accomplish anything, never have anything better than the meager existence we knew. This made it super easy for me to choose (and stay trapped in) an abusive relationship for most of my adult years, all the while believing that I was getting what I deserved, and that I couldn’t make it on my own.

I could go on and on with the bad things that happened to me, and how I let them beat me down. To say that I’ve seen some shit in my life would be a gross understatement. I could have become an angry, bitter monster of a person and no one would have really blamed me if they knew my story. But, that’s not who I am, or who I wanted to be.

Here’s the deal: When people abuse us, we don’t stop loving them. We stop loving ourselves.

I didn’t turn my anger outward and bite back at those who harmed me. I just wallowed in self-loathing instead. I took over where my abusers left off, and told myself every day that no one loved me because I was not lovable, that I wasn’t worthy of the things I wanted, that I would never be anybody or have anything. I practically made a sport of my self-harm, constantly looking for new ways to hurt myself.

My inner dialogue was a non-stop-loop of all the awful things people said to me. I internalized those messages and made them part of every single day. They were my truth, and my sad little life was a glaring reflection of my poor self-image and lack of self-worth.

Through therapy, I learned to tune into my thoughts. I became more mindful of that little voice that was always trying to knock me down a peg. Eventually, I learned to silence it and replace it with a new voice that sounded more like an old friend.

When my negative thoughts and limiting beliefs showed up, I would consciously choose to stop them by saying, “that is not my truth”. Then, I would choose a thought that felt better and use it like a mantra.

“I can’t,” (lose this weight, write this book, land this promotion..)became, “I can.”

“I’m not,” (smart enough, pretty enough, good enough…) became, “I am.”

As I changed my self-talk, almost like magic, I changed my life.

I left my toxic marriage, and cut out other relationships that were not good for me. My confidence grew at work, and I started pushing myself to learn, grow and excel in my field. I found my voice, and started writing to share my story and all the things it has taught me.

I did so many new things that I never thought I could do- I gave myself permission to try, permission to look silly, permission to fail, permission to have adventures, to be frivolous, to be free. I gave myself permission to live, to love, to become the woman I was born to be.

Looking back on my life, I can see the line of demarcation that separates the years before I learned to love myself, and everything that has happened since. I went from lying on the couch staring at the television all day in a depression coma to making my dreams come true in just a few short, powerful years.

Unlearning my conditioning and replacing all the junk that came from other people with love, praise and patience for myself made all the things I once believed were impossible, possible. Eventually, I had to learn to dream even bigger, because I looked around one day and realized that I had everything I had ever wanted. I’ve never been more grateful for my life, and all the lessons I learned from my past, and cannot wait to see what the next chapter holds.

When you tell a child she is worthless, you are telling her that you haven’t processed your own pain. Hurt people hurt people, after all.

When you tell a child she is worthless, you are exposing your own feelings of worthlessness, shame, fear and inadequacy.

When you tell a child she is worthless, you are passing down your toxic patterns like a generational curse- one she will either break or pass along to her own children one day.

When you tell a child she is worthless, she will unconsciously do everything she can to live up to that label. But, hopefully, one day she will realize that you were wrong.

Maybe, she will learn to love herself anyway, even if no one else ever did. And, maybe she will choose to live her life unencumbered by your criticism and neglect.

Maybe she will learn to rewrite the script in her mind with loving thoughts to crowd out the bullshit you told her about herself, and learn to see herself as worthy, whole and perfect.

Maybe she will create a life so amazing, she’ll have to push herself to dream bigger and bigger, because she will know that she can have, do or be anything she can imagine.

Maybe someday she will forgive you, and find gratitude for the strength she found in her struggle. Maybe she will be the one to end the cycle- to break the generational curse you passed down to her- so her children will not suffer.