This may be an easy concept to embrace intellectually, but I have seen over and over again, and experienced myself, the heartbreak and questioning of identity and worth that happens when individuals are not able to do the things that they are used to doing in their lives.
I hear all the time, “I just want to get back to my life” or “I want to be able to do the things I used to do.”
This is because the things we do CAN help bring meaning and purpose and feel like contribution.
However, it is vital to understand and believe that the things we do are not what gives us our innate value and worth.
Rather, we are already completely valuable and worthy of love, and nothing we do or don’t do can change that. Think of a newborn baby — any newborn baby — they don’t have to do anything and yet it’s so easy to see they are precious and valuable. Think of someone who is in a vegetative state, who cannot do anything but lie there — they are no less worthy of love or valuable as a human being.
I loved this quote from Aselin Maloney on the podcast this week. It is true and an important idea to embrace and remember:
“I think we prejudge what contribution is, and often we define contribution as sameness … what I did prior to my injury. … The paradigm of ‘what I could do yesterday I can’t do today,’ we make that mean something’s going wrong, and that is not inherently what that means. It means that now I need to be more creative and accepting and have awareness that I am NOT the sum of the things that I do. And that is a tough emotional thing to have to work through. …The things that we do are not who we are, and that is an important lesson that life offers us in diagnosis and injury.”
You are worthy. You are valuable. No amount of ‘lack of productivity’ can change that. Really, truly.
Love,
Bethany