“Why have you valued yourself in pennies when you are worth a king’s ransom? Why did you listen to those who demeaned you…..and far worse, why did you believe them?”
-OG MANDINO
Today I acknowledge my worth despite the flaws I have and broken parts yet to be fixed.
Another label….broken.
Were you labeled at some point in your life as “broken”. I was. From birth I was broken, The words are painful to speak but they infiltrated my brain at a very early age and although I tried so hard to “fix” the broken part since I really didn’t know what it was the task was impossible.
Many of us were labeled broken, The adoptees, the abused, the fosters, the discards. They would have kept us if we weren’t broken..right? Wrong!
Leonard Cohen sings so brilliantly about being broken, being “cracked” and that’s where the light gets in. I so believe that. I now love my cracks and am on my way to filling with light.
A few years ago I was in a store and saw a Buddha on a sales table with the label “broken”. I picked him up and inspected him from head to toe and saw nothing. I thought perhaps there had been a mistake made and asked the sales clerk. “Oh no!” She said. “See that little crack right there, that makes him broken and nobody will buy him with a crack”. He came home with me that day. He was no more broken than I.
It’s the labels that confine us. The labels from life, from parents, from school, from society. People are so willing to throw out labels, as if it is safer to put us in little boxes and the world will run better because we are neatly stacked in boxes with labels.
My labels came with a price tag. My worth was calculated by how perfect i could look, behave, perform. It all had to be perfect or my worth was nothing. I wasn’t good enough. Those labels rock a child’s self esteem and set them up for a lifetime of angst. Those labels can be a heavy burden to carry into adulthood and taint everything in our world.
Often, especially with adopted children. When we reach puberty and begin to display traits that don’t “fit” the perfect mould that was expected and demanded, the trouble begins. In reality, there is nothing wrong with us. We are just being who we really are in genetics.
For all people that don’t fit the mould…there is nothing wrong with you…NOTHING.
Og Mandino wrote in The Greatest Miracle in the World. “Never, until the end of time, will there be another such as you.” Appreciate your uniqueness, your flaws, your cracks ,for they are yours alone.
Understanding your uniqueness is what esteeming the Self is all about. It’s realizing that you have been good enough, smart enough, worthy enough all along.
Buddha said “Everything we are is the result of what we have thought”
Today, I believe in my worth. I am filled with the light that gets in through all of my “cracks”. I am not broken and neither are you. You are worthy and beautiful, flaws and all. Start saying that and thinking and soon you will believe.
The Almost Daughter & More 
My mother would listen to Leonard Cohen and I remember that line, it has struck with me for years…”that’s how the light gets in”. Wonderful post, thanks.