I FELT WORTHLESS, BUT I NEVER WAS

I used to feel ashamed and weak. I used to believe I was nothing and worthless. 

These are the things that little me believed..

Little 7-10 year old me, going through cancer chemotherapy treatment. Feeling weak. Disgusting. Unlovable.

I believed these were true about me. I felt shame. I felt ashamed. 

(Tbh, in this moment while writing this it was actually hard for me to remember why I once felt shame or unworthy. It is so clearly all a lie to me now. This is the true power and possibility of defining our pasts for us!)

I felt less than the kids back at school. I was in the hospital. Sick. Bald. Gross. Embarrassed about the state of my body and how weak I felt. 

I felt horrifically ashamed. 

These feelings were some of the many that I repressed during treatment. 

They resurfaced in my late adolescence jarringly and with a vengeance!!

I will always remember one of the most sacred, life-changing experiences of my life. 

I was a student at the University of Santa Monica. I was 25 and studying Spiritual Psychology after completing my bachelor’s degree. The first few months had already altered my life paradigm. That was only the beginning. 

I was taking the program because I felt so called to it, I could sense at my deepest core level that it was instrumental to my life path. And in the moment, all I cared about was healing. I was so raw, felt so broken, in so much darkness & pain, feeling trapped from childhood trauma. It felt like it controlled me. Like I was imprisoned by it & I truly didn’t know if I ever would be free of it - I had tried so damn much & still kept coming up against the walls of this internal traumatic box.

And so, I went deep. As I learned the new techniques and principles of spiritual psychology, I took turns being the facilitator and the client in process.

I went all in. Throughout the 2-year program, I revisited those most trauma-filled childhood experiences. What I endured. What I felt and came to believe about myself. At age 25 I was still believing a lot of that bullshit. 

My past was examined by me with so much raw truth & honesty, brought to the present moment… 

And my entire life up until then shattered in my perception of my self I had been carrying. 

The most unexpected ingredient that was pivotal in my transformation? 

I was seen. 

I was heard. 

I was seen and heard by all of my loving classmates, in all of my childhood sick and powerless and grossness…

I expected to be received with judgement. 

Disgust. 

Being too much. 

“Too dramatic.”

To be viewed as weird, inferior, rejected.  

I had thought that’s what I was. What I was worthy of…

But instead, I was responded to in a way that is bringing tears to my eyes now. 

My classmates looked at me and saw me. 

They saw me on a deep, soulful, heartfelt compassionate human to human loving level. 

They saw, in those moments, the pain I had endured.

They saw the depths of darkness, emotional isolation, life-and-death trauma I faced at such a tender age. 

Somehow, they saw it. They sensed it through my sharing of it. They saw me.

The way they saw me. 

The way they held me. 

The way their eyes conveyed the depths and compassion of their heart…

It is one of the greatest gifts I have truly ever had the honor & grace to receive.

That seeing of me. 

The being seen through truly pure eyes of unconditional loving, acceptance…

They saw me. 

And it didn’t stop there. 

Throughout the 2 years I learned that I never - no kid - should ever have had to endure what I did. 

I should never have had to go through what I suffered.

I had never allowed myself to fully validate the horror I lived through.

As a kid I was told I was strong. Told I was positive. Told I was optimistic and lucky and blessed. 

I never felt like any of those. 

I felt like a sick broken worthless unlovable child barely worthy of living.

You can’t believe you’re strong when you only feel the exact opposite. 

But here I was, over 15 years later, for the first time believing that it wasn’t okay what I went through. 

That I didn’t have to feel grateful just to be alive. That I didn’t have to feel lucky because it wasn’t “as bad as what others went through.” I didn’t have to wipe it all away with a fake plastered smile in the name of toxic positivity and worshipping suffering.

F*ck. 

I was allowed to feel allll of the toxic heavy horrific unpleasant ugly messy bullshit I actually felt. 

I was seen by my classmates as I worked through it. 

And the tipping point of it all -

I was seen in alllll of that messy raw unhealed truth and what liberated me:

They saw me as none of that. 

They only saw pure, perfection, unconditionally worthy lovable perfect and whole. 

They saw me straight f*cking through it alllllll. 

They looked at me and all they saw was unconditional worth.

That’s when I learned I actually was lovable. 

Worthy. 

Perfection as my essence. 

Infinite at my core. 

Forever beyond and unbound by this limited temporary body and Earth life. 

WHOLE.

Much Love,

Jenna