JUST DESSERTS AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON WORTHINESS

Warning....this post is chock full of beautiful pictures of dessert.
Continue reading at your own risk.

We've recently upended our house to replace the downstairs flooring.
In addition to the flooring facelift, we took time to purge and reorganize.

There were things in our house that just didn't work for 

who we are anymore (wine fridge),

and things that were broken or fragmented (snaggle tooth puzzles, lone gloves).

There were also items that needed to be rearranged for more functionality

 like the kiddos drop off station for their backpacks and lunch boxes.

We let go of at least 2 car loads of 'stuff' and 

what remains is needed and loved.

It looks beautiful.

It's the best our house has ever looked.

Everything that made it back into the house has a spot,

every room is laid out to maximize the way we live,

there is no extra pile sitting in a room waiting for 

me to spend 3 hours sorting it.

I've been stating for years that this needed to happen

and we finally made it happen.

I should feel great right?

Smug, accomplished, full of myself.
WRONG.

Instead, I've spent the better part of a month feeling anxious
and bingeing on baked goods-
which generally means I'm avoiding a feeling.

Pro tip:  There has never been a pie
that was so good that I needed to eat the whole thing.

If I am mindlessly grazing, I am trying to numb myself from something.

It is ALWAYS a sign that I am uncomfortably up in my feelings,
that I am avoiding something,
that my anxiety is up and I really want to check out.
You might use alcohol, or sex, work or instagram.
I use high quality good gluten free baked goods.
The behavior is the symptom that something is off-
but it's not always clear to me what is causing me to feel like this.

Most days I get up before everyone else in my house 

and spend that time focusing on something just for me.

Some days I write, some days I meditate or do something creative.

For a few days I decided to focus on this behavior of mine-

Why am I anxious?

Why am I suddenly eating in spite of not feeling hungry?

What hole am I trying to fill with food?

What was lurking just past the edges of my consciousness?

Turns out the culprit is an old frenemy that 
I will deal with periodically for the rest of my life.

Each time I pull it up by the roots, 
it tries to find some other ground to land in.
Who is this frenemy?
It's my own self-worth.
As I sat and thought about what could be making me anxious
these thoughts rose to the surface:

People like me don't deserve to have beautiful, 

organized places that greet them with joy.

People like me deserve chaos and layers of dysfunction

 that I have to fight through for crumbs of joy.

People like me have to earn acceptance and peace-

it's not something I give myself.

This house felt too nice for someone like me.

I don't belong here.

Wow.

Bless my heart.

This is of course not true-at least not true in the factual sense.

The floor redo is bought and paid for-

with cash that was earned through hard work.

The house reflects a vision that I worked to create 

and it fits the life I live beautifully.

My name is on the deed and I get mail regularly at this address.

It's my home and it reflects my family and our choices throughout.
I definitely belong here by all realistic measures.

The legacy of childhood neglect and trauma though...

that sucker will continue to invite me into conversations 

like this for a good long time.

I am not unique in that a lot of my childhood was spent

 in an ecosystem filled with chaotic energy.

Household organization wasn't a tool in the arsenal 

of things my mother used to maneuver in life.

Things happened in our household via a series of 

haphazard behavior that no one quite understood.

There was food because someone inevitably got 

hungry and ran around screaming for someone else
to put a meal together.

There were clean clothes because we ran out of them 

and someone grudgingly threw a load in the wash,

and it eventually made it to the dryer, 

and then sat in a hamper until DANG!  

all the clothes were dirty again.
There were police at our house because
someone stopped for beer on the way home
and then things quickly escalated.

Very little that sustained life in our house happened

 on purpose or according to a plan.
Most of it appeared to be the result of magical formula
that no adult was able to understand.

On my rare glimpses of other people's lives, 

I would see clean floors,

organized kitchens, bedrooms that contained dressers 

and no visible piles of clothing.

There was peace in other people's houses, 

there was laughter and joy and stability.
I know these things aren't necessarily equated
but I don't think they're wholly unrelated either.

Those other houses had a quality within their lives that was valuable.

I knew that I wanted that domestic tranquility for myself.

I took mental snapshots and created future based life goals

 that included a house the lifted me up when I walked in the door.

At the same time, I cherish my ability to surf chaos.

I have made a fairly successful living at seeing a giant mess

 and understanding on a fundamental level what makes it move.

I can find the lever that is causing systems to fall apart repeatedly

or the thread of a good idea woven inside of the tangle.
I can go around rules and in between expectations
because I don't usually see them until after the fact.
I am less limited in my thinking sometimes than other people.

I can create order out of chaos because on some level I am at home in chaos.

It feels right.

It feels like what I deserve.

That word 'deserve' is an interesting mind twister.
The formal definition of deserve is 

'to do something or have or show qualities worthy of (reward or punishment).'

If I deserve something, it's because I

or someone else else has judged me and found me worthy of it.
Who makes the rules determining what I deserve?
I'm a privileged white woman living in middle class America.
Even though there are certainly social expectations,
I am more free than ever to decide whose opinions matter.
I can literally take my ball and go home if I don't like something.
And yet....I am the person who limits myself time and again.

Every time I remember this truth,
I swear a little because it's so mortifying that I am able to forget it.

I will create the world or the life that reflects 
what I believe I am worthy of having.

Also, if I don't think I'm worthy of something, 

then I will destroy it or leave it or ignore it or avoid it.

Do I deserve my job?

What about my relationships?

My body, my health, my life?

The car I drive or the clothes I wear?
What about joy?  Or laughter?
Do I deserve these things?
There is no verbal answer that will show the truth here-
my actions and my choices will tell the story.

I'm grateful that I know that I often play a part within

 my own life to determine how my life functions and manifests.
I'm also frustrated and embarrassed by it.
It doesn't matter how hard I work or how much energy 
I expend to climb that mountain.
If I don't think I deserve reaching the vista,
I'll keep finding reasons to sit down on the side of the mountain.
Like my desire to be loved exactly as I am, 

completely and whole-heartedly which is

sabotaged every time I refuse to be my whole-hearted 

vulnerable self with people close to me.

Or the busyness that keeps me from writing on days 

that I've targeted a specifically hard topic to discuss.

Or my desire to thrive physically that can start drifting sideways 

because I'm not sure I deserve to live in a nice house.
I am the biggest impediment to the life that I want to live
and it's often because I don't think I deserve that life.

I have not eradicated the anxious eating from my current life.

It settles for a day or two and then it sneaks in again.

It takes a while for what I know in my brain to seep 
into my body or my practice.

I deserve to live without chaos, to be surrounded by beauty.

I know this intellectually but it may take months for my body 
and heart to believe it too.

I've done this dance with myself before, 
I'm committed to loving myself through this change 
no matter how long it takes to believe that I deserve my dreams.
It's not a one and done,
I have not failed if I've eaten a cookie or a piece of cake.
Or two or three.
I've just proved that I've got opportunity to love myself more.

It took me a long time to realize that health is something

 you cultivate and not something

that magically happens to you.
What do you believe you deserve?
Don't answer out loud-
look at the story of your actions,
your choices.
It's in there.