I went from beautifully broken to unbelievable badass.

I’ve had low self-esteem for as long as I can remember. I can’t tell you why or how or what caused it, all I can tell you is that from a very early age I somehow just knew I was “less than”. I loved to talk but was always told I talked too much. Anytime I spoke up with an opinion or a thought that went against the majority, I was then made the subject of ridicule and called “stupid” or “dumb” because obviously, I wasn’t smart enough to go with the crowd. That was just one of my major flaws.

I was a tomboy growing up. The oldest of four, I had three younger brothers that were as rough and tumble as they get. Our house was a battlefield and the fact I was a girl didn’t buy me any mercy. It was survival of the fittest. I was too much of a tomboy for a lot of the guys my own age and for others I was dubbed as “fat”.

Self-esteem is such a minefield of emotion isn’t it? We’re all so desperate to fit in when we’re young that we don’t always speak up or express our individuality. We accept the brutal labels thrown on us because it’s easier than challenging the suggestion and making a bigger fool of yourself. So for someone with self-esteem, it becomes easy to believe that you’re fat, ugly, stupid etc. If the people around you all think this well, you’d be crazy not too also. Right?

Being an individual is much more terrifying than following a crowd. When you follow the crowd you blend in, if you’re an individual, well then you’re standing out and that’s way too vulnerable, isn’t it? Better to hide in plain sight. Be quiet, lay low. Watch and observe, but never speak up or out against the group. That would be social suicide!

Those same general ideals followed me into my adult life. I still loved to talk but I saved that for more social or friendly engagements. In my work life I was relatively quiet. I never suggested any new ideas or opinions. What for? I was more than likely the least intelligent on the team, I would hate to ruin the rapport I have with my colleagues by opening my mouth and saying something stupid. No, better to stay quiet and remain the kind, friendly person they know me as. Don’t rock the boat.

You can imagine how positive life was with an attitude like that. (Yes I’m being sarcastic). Poor self-image leads to a host of emotional problems. I dated more than one asshole that treated me poorly. Though I went back to that same type of guy over and over because I was clearly worthy of it. Hell, I was lucky a guy was looking at me at all. Beggars can’t be choosers. I was dumb as a brick and hideous to boot, it was a miracle I had any options. For all intents and purposes I should have been ringing a bell tower in a faraway land somewhere hidden away from the village people for fear of causing nightmares!

As long as I didn’t talk too much and annoy them, they wouldn’t get mad and call me names or mistreat me. If I just toed the line. If I just kept my mouth shut. If I just found a way to hide my personality, I would be acceptable.

(CRINGE)

Let’s say it together….”UGH……PATHETIC”. (Trust me, it hurts me more than you but stay with me, it gets better)

The one ray of light here is that I was lucky enough to meet a really good man who didn’t take advantage of my huge heart and kind nature. We have a good, strong, solid marriage (going on 8yrs!) and I’m very grateful for that and for him.

After years of awful relationships and being a repeated doormat for loser boyfriends, shady friends and greedy employers, I finally snapped and lost my shit. Like, literally lost my shit.

I was at a unique point in midlife where I was forced to take a hard look at my life, my behaviors, myself. I had no idea where to start or how to begin but what I did know was that the first half of my life had been a real honest struggle and I wanted the second half to be….different.

I did a lot of thinking and soul searching about the first half of my life that had so abruptly ended in rubble and memories. I thought about all of the things I had hoped to accomplish up until this point and I hadn’t. I started to think about WHY I hadn’t accomplished the things I had hoped for. Small things. They weren’t huge. That thought led to a revelation that I’m still horrified to admit today, “I have never ever reached for anything beyond, mediocrity”.

Never once had I ever tried to go all the way with anything. It wasn’t because I was lazy, it wasn’t because I had no drive. It was because I never thought I was capable of anything other than below level mediocrity at best. In a nutshell, I never thought I was worth the effort.

Even in trying to lose weight I wouldn’t set out to fit into a bikini or skimpy dress or anything. I would just pray to lose a little weight, just enough to look “average”. I never hoped to be beautiful or stunning, or anything ridiculous like that. I just wanted to be good enough.

I usually kept my hair at or below shoulder length because it hid my face. I rarely looked people in the eye as I was so self-conscious, so having the longer hair helped me keep relatively covered. I had always admired shorter, cute, fun haircuts but those were for a different type of woman. Not a woman like me.

I sat thinking about all of this for a while and I started to really dissect the various aspects of my self-defeating behaviors. If I wanted the second half of my life to be different than the first, I was going to have to put in the work to change and the first step was identifying the behaviors that were hindering me. Believe me when I tell you, low self-esteem was at the root cause of the majority of my life’s problems.

It affected every aspect of me and who I was as a person. It affected my clothing choices, my hairstyle, my social life, (or lack thereof). I was essentially a kind friendly hermit that came out of her house to work and that was about it.

Low self-esteem meant that confidence was nothing more than a wish for me. There was no such thing as confidence in my world. The thought was absurd! Confidence was for people who had something to be confident about. In my mind, I wasn’t very smart, I wasn’t much to look at but I knew beyond the shadow of any doubt, I was one of the kindest people that you ever knew. For some reason that was the one and only part of myself that I would not deny and that I was proud of. I was a good person, with a good heart and I liked to make people smile.

This one quality of myself that I believed in wholeheartedly actually drew people to me. I’m a very likeable lady. I’m very warm and loving, kind almost to a fault and I’m everyone’s cheerleader. I’m the friend you come too when you need advice, love or acceptance. I’ve been that way my whole life. I love, accept and appreciate the people around me because they don’t have to be there, they choose to be. The bonds that I do form with people are lasting, authentic and cherished. Because I love people.

So why in the hell was it so unbelievably hard for me to love myself? The reason was because in my mind, I knew who I really was. I knew the person that hid on the inside wasn’t the same as the person they saw on the outside. No one really knew the pathetic excuse for a woman that I felt like I was on the inside.

Clearly I had identified the root cause of my misery. So now what? How do you even begin to undo an entire lifetime of self-defeating behavior and negative self-talk? What the hell made me think that I even COULD undo a lifetime of such self-abuse which literally affected my life in every possible aspect?

It all came down to this…… it was the only thing I hadn’t ever tried.

Read that again and let it sink in. The only thing I had never tried doing was being kind, loving, and accepting of….. myself.

I had no clue how to do that. So what did I do? I hit the books, searched YouTube, I looked for anything and everything I could find to help learn how to start retraining my mindset. I’d be lying if I told you it was easy.

We couldn’t afford a therapist or anything of that kind so I was on my own as far as learning about ways to cope and retrain my brain, more specifically, my thought process. There is an unbelievable amount of information available and so many free resources online, I urge you to take a look. My husband and I worked diligently together, learning, talking and communicating about this and approaching it as a team.

It took a little time but I realized that if I was going to tackle this head on and really, truly try to change myself for the better, I needed to go all the way. I was going to give myself and this process 100% dedication.

The first thing I had to address was the negative self-talk. This is self-defeating behavior 101. Logically, if I was going to move forward with a positive outlook I would need to retrain myself to think in a positive context. Otherwise, it would be impossible to change my mindset or thought process. I had to find a way to quiet that negative little voice in the back of my head.

You have to stop the negative self-talk

So, I sat down and took the time to write out each and every hideous, ugly thought that crossed my mind on a daily basis. Each negative, hateful thing that was constantly at the forefront of almost every thought I had. Things like:

“You’re a failure, you’ve always been a failure you’re so pathetic”

“You’re ugly, he’s only with you because he feels sorry for you, you’re a joke and everyone knows it”

“They would all be better off without you and you know it”

I’ll spare you the rest, I’m sure you get the idea. Some of you might even be able to relate to that type of mentality. I hope not because it’s awful but it was my reality for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know how to be anything other than hard on myself. By the time it was said and done, I filled up that entire page. That’s a sad thought isn’t it? An entire page of hate and loathing all directed at…myself.

My intention with this exercise was to put the awful things I thought into print. By doing this I was trying to accomplish two things.

1. I wanted the thoughts OUT of my head. It’s easy to dismiss a thought as “not that bad” but not as easy to dismiss something real and tangible that you could hold and look at. Seeing the harsh, horrible, hateful words real and in print was really pretty shocking. Because everything about them went against my very nature. I’m a very kind, loving, accepting person. There was not an ounce of kindness, love, or acceptance in anything I ever said to myself.

2. I was trying to hold myself accountable for the actual thoughts and feelings I was having. I had hid from this for too long, it was necessary to be honest with myself about how truly shitty and defeating my behaviors really were. People with very low self-esteem are masters at deflecting attention away from themselves. It’s also easy for us to dismiss our own self-care as “petty” or “stupid”.

Wellness is a family affair

Everyone has that inner voice that kind of guides them through life. We had already successfully (and accurately) determined my “inner voice” was really more of a sadistic bitch. I couldn’t just silence my thought process though. So my plan of action was really pretty simple, myself, my husband and our two kids 7 and 15 all rallied. Mom was going to be gently reminded every single time anyone including my children heard me say something negative about myself in anyway.

I purposely brought my children into the mix because I had done a lot to conceal my behaviors around them during the years though, I knew that my kids had seen and heard more of the negative than they should have. I wanted to correct this for myself but also for my two kids. I hadn’t been a good example of a self-assured role model up until this point. The only thing I could do now, was hopefully show them how you can become one, even if you have to work at it in midlife.

This also kept me accountable and made our entire family much more self-aware of the things that we say to ourselves out loud and in our heads, and to one another. So we all took a more gentle approach. It went a little something like this..

Me: (breaks a glass doing dishes) “Ugh Stacey you idiot”

My daughter: ”Mommy uh uh, you’re supposed to say “Ugh Stacey you awesome lady, you broke a glass, oh well”.

It sounds ridiculously elementary I know. Too silly to possibly work, right? We’ll see.

It caught on quick and it didn’t take long before there was a definite air of change in our household. The general vibe was just beginning to be much more…happy. This was a start!

Finding a sense of self-worth

I already knew what I didn’t like about myself. The harder part was finding something I did genuinely like. I had always been so laser focused on everything that was wrong with me, that I never in my entire life acknowledged what was good about me. That was one hell of a revelation. I had always been so incredibly critical of myself that I never once stopped to give myself any credit for the good qualities I carried.

People with critically low self-esteem will find this task next to impossible. We tend to view ourselves as the lowest of the low with little to no redeeming qualities or self-worth of any kind. I struggled for several days before deciding I would need to come back to that. I decided to tackle this from a different avenue. What could I do about the things I didn’t like?

The first thing I needed to do was be realistic about what I truly didn’t like about me. The one thing I kept coming back to was my intelligence. I always felt intellectually stupid. Truly dumb. Growing up like any other kid, I dealt with name calling and various levels of bullying to an extent. I was always told to shut up or that I talked too much. I was made to feel like anything I said was idiotic and I should keep my thoughts and opinions to myself because they had no value or relevance.

I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. I wanted to feel like I had something worthwhile to add to a social conversation. I wanted to feel like I too, could participate in idea sessions at work and feel confident in the projects I recommended being viewed as worthy. To put it simply, I just wanted to fit it. I just wanted to be like everyone else.

I had attempted to further my education a few times in the past but never completed my degree. What better way to empower myself than by pushing through to the completion of my degree. It had been a while since I was school so I knew this would be a challenge. All in all I had attended 3 different community colleges off and on over a ten year span. I looked into programs around my area and then set about contacting the colleges I had previously attended to get a copy of my transcripts.

I remember speaking with my advisor and she asked me if I knew what types of grades I had gotten in the past. We were trying to get an idea of how many transferrable credits I had. I told her I really wasn’t sure of the grades themselves. I was always so busy working full time and going to school that I kind of just went from one class to the next only knowing that my grades were good enough to move on to the next course. I filled out the necessary forms and we contacted my previous schools for transcript information.

I was at work when I saw the first email come through. I was too busy to open it up and read so I just went ahead and forwarded the transcript to my advisor. Over the next two hours I got the transcripts from the other two schools and did the same forward to my advisor. I didn’t need to look at them. My advisor needed them to complete my registration and now, she had what she needed. She would call me if she needed anything else.

Oh, she definitely called me.

The birth of a fucking bad ass

When you think back on the profound, life changing moments of your existence, you’ll see that more often than not, those decisions were small, subtle choices. Choices that lead you down amazing paths of life you never saw coming.

The other times are life’s way of smacking you in the face with your fate whether you believe in yourself or not.

I opened my email later that evening and saw a message from my advisor letting me know what my transferrable credits were and the number of credits I would need to complete my degree. She also let me know I was only 1 class shy of my associate’s degree. “That can’t be right” I thought to myself. There was a mistake somewhere. Education had never been my strong suit. I struggled a lot and had to put in twice the work that my peers did in some areas (Fuck you Math).

Confused I opened up the first transcript. I saw the mistake right away whoever had pulled my transcript had confused something somewhere because these grades were all A’s and B’s. I rolled my eyes in irritation, I was going to have to delay registration to get this sorted out. I decided I better look at the other transcripts to make sure they were accurate.

Both of the other transcripts read the same. A’s and B’s. I pulled up all three transcripts and placed them side by side. This had to be a fluke, I took a look at the classes remembering I had taken honors English courses, Biology, Physiology, and Microbiology to name a few. These were my courses, these were my grades.

I remember my heart racing. I remember studying each transcript like it was foreign, I was looking for any way to prove that this was some kind of mistake, but the transcripts didn’t lie. I stared at them for a few minutes until my eyes started to blur from the tears welling in my eyes. For 30+ years I had allowed myself to believe other people’s perception of me.

I had allowed that perception to drive my own view of me and my life. All of that negativity, self-doubt and hatred had manifested into a pathetic, weepy, spineless shell of a human with no backbone and no voice. I had allowed others to silence me without even knowing what I had to say because I truly believed what I was repeatedly told, that I was stupid. The acceptance was starting to sink in.

I was slowly beginning to understand just how wrong I had been all these years. It happened fast, it was a moment, just a few seconds really and my entire world turned upside down.

You see, this was the moment it all changed, my life changed

The moment the person I was, died.

And the moment, the woman I was always meant to be, was born.

Because in that moment I realized, I was NEVER fucking stupid and I knew then, without any doubt my world was about to blow wide open in a way I had never dreamed possible.

I’m already in my 40’s so I have to make up for lost time. I vowed right then and there that no matter what, I was going to follow every goddamned dream I had. From this point on, my heart and my relatively intelligent mind 😊 will lead the way.

It’s been just a little over a year since that life changing moment. I’m happier than I’ve ever been and more accepting of myself in every way. As it turns out, all of those years quietly watching and studying my surroundings has made me quite the savvy business lady. Knowledge is power so I always make sure I’m armed with all the necessary information before I go into any situation or deal, after all, I’m not stupid. 😉

I do cringe when I think about how far I could have gone or what I could be doing if I would have believed in myself sooner. Still, I can’t complain. I have an incredible job as a public speaker working with the community and those who are in need of support and guidance. I also fulfilled my personal, lifelong dream of freelance writing. I never had the courage to put my thoughts to paper before but I find it so natural now, I don’t plan on ever stopping. I haven’t quite found my niche just yet so I’m dabbling in a few different things, though I have no doubt I’ll get there.

Eventually I’d like to start a YouTube channel or maybe do a few guest speaker spots at public speaking events. It’s not about the money, I really want to find a way to reach the other people like me, the people with good hearts and small voices who need someone to believe in them. My hope is that I can inspire others to chase their dreams and overcome self-doubt.

I want to be that motivation, that inspiration to help others believe in themselves. That’s my true passion, I want to help inspire as much joy and happiness as I can. Life is already so incredibly hard at times, you don’t have to fall prisoner to the self-defeating behaviors that I did. I want to help people like me find their own way from broken to badass. It’s inside all of us, it’s up to you to believe in yourself, or you can choose to believe the bullshit.

The choice is yours… I’ll be waiting to help show you the way when you decide.

All my love and best wishes

Xoxoxo - S

Thank you for reading this and please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might be inspired by it.