Self-Worth: Coming Home to Yourself

Let’s talk about self-worth. For much of my life, and probably still continuing to this day, I have tied my self-worth to achievement and my appearance. When I have been stopped in my tracks with illness or certain life events, I feel lost. A few months ago, I was forced to slow down not just physically but mentally. I had tubes and a pump connected to me for what seemed like it would be an eternity. I couldn’t lift my arms up. I couldn’t shower. I couldn’t wash my hair. I felt disgusting.

I couldn’t lift anything over five pounds, which was basically the weight of the pump. Small things in the grand scheme of life really, but it was catastrophic for me at the time.

Not only that, I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than what felt like a nanosecond. I stared at my computer, cursor moving, but I wasn’t. An entire day would pass with my crowning achievement being using the remote to turn on and off the television. It was a far cry from me writing complex legal briefs and structuring deals, arguing in court, or taking depositions. There were times that I thought I would not be able to write again. That I wouldn’t get my concentration back. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

And then there was the appearance piece of it, which if I’m being honest, hit harder than I expected. Not because it should, but because it does. When you are used to presenting a certain way to the world — put together, capable, in control — and that gets stripped away, it’s disorienting. You don’t recognize yourself, and without realizing it, you start to equate that with not being yourself at all.

I remember walking to a doctor’s appointment one day, moving slower than I ever have (and I am normally slow), feeling like everyone could see everything that was “off.” My accoutrement of tubes and pumps hidden not so well under my clothing. A man held the door open for me. Nothing extraordinary. No grand gesture. Just a small, ordinary moment of kindness. But I noticed it in a way I don’t think I would have before. It cut through everything I was telling myself about how I looked and how diminished I felt. It reminded me, very simply, that I am still here. Not as a version of myself that needs to be polished or performing, but just… here.

There is something unsettling about being reduced to your most basic state and realizing how much of your identity was built on things that can disappear overnight. Achievement can pause. Appearance can change. Your capacity can shift in ways you never anticipated. And when those things go quiet, you’re left with yourself in a way that feels both unfamiliar and unavoidable. You have to acknowledge that control is sometimes an illusion.

I don’t have a clean answer for how to untangle self-worth from all of that. I’m still in it. I still have days where I feel gross – just incapacitated. But I do know this: the absence of productivity is not the absence of value. And being seen, even in the smallest moments, can feel like a lifeline when everything else feels uncertain.