Week 58 - Feeling Worthy
Big week this past week. It was my birthday 🥳
Birthdays have notoriously been very charged for me. I’ve had so many amazing birthdays, but most of the time I don’t want to celebrate my birthday because I don’t think that people will show up. That’s what we like to call in the biz a self-worth issue.
My inner critic tells me that I don’t matter, that people don’t care and that I shouldn’t set myself up for failure so just don’t celebrate my birthday.
Behind every inner critic is actually fear disguised as judgement. And behind the fear is a deeper longing. A longing to belong, to connect, to be loved.
If I’m being honest, last year I was still in that place. I didn’t celebrate my birthday with anyone but Ryan. We took a trip together but stayed in our condo, if you catch my drift. And honestly it was amazing. I loved that birthday.
But this year felt really different. I’ve spent the ENTIRE year with a focus on finding and building community with people that inspire the crap out of me. My dream birthday was to spend it with said people. But my community is very dispersed and definitely not in the city that I currently live in. So my hopes were low that I’d be seeing my new peeps for my bday.
Until things started to fall into place✨
So many of my friends are digital nomads or live in other cities, but their travels slowed down and many of them were returning home. And home for them being in New York. My parents live in New York so I got the idea that I could have my bday in NY.
Which is also a full circle moment, I used to HATE coming to NY. I felt I had no friends here even though I went to high school here (story for another day).
So I really wanted to make NY work for my bday, and I wanted to bring Nacho. Even though this was exactly what I wanted, my brain still tried to play tricks on me telling me that people don’t care, they won’t come, you’re bothering them, etc. So I procrastinated on inviting people. And what to do. All self-sabotage so that I could blame not having a birthday on something other than people not actually liking me.
But this story has a good ending.
This past Saturday I celebrated my bday in Central Park with so many of my new friends and some old friends and it was absolutely perfect.
AND probably the best part, other than all these amazing people taking time out of their lives to spend it with me, is that there was no alcohol consumed. That wasn’t really an intention I set but just came to fruition organically.
After so many years of being a partier, the vast majority of my adult friendships have hinged on drinking together. And what I’ve learned from those relationships is that they don’t last. It’s easy to make friends when you’re drunk, it’s also easy to lose friends the moment you no longer do all the time.
It made me REALLY happy to know that these new friends are all REAL friends. We have REAL connection based on our true selves, not an insecure inebriated version we all sported for too long.
And I realize I feel so safe in these friendships because they are based on common values and a shared vision of the world we want to create. Instead of based on the fact that we both like margaritas.
So I’m hoping this is the start of a year full of self-worth and full of accepting love. Because that’s actually the hard part. Believing that we are worthy of love and then actually accepting that love. It can feel really uncomfortable. That’s why SO many people are the “I’m not a birthday person” type of people. It’s hard for them to feel lovable and thus to accept love.
I feel very loved right now. I feel very safe. And I feel very secure in my skin and my being. I believe THAT’S what real friendships do. Make you see yourself for who you really are and believe it.
Happy Birthday to all my Virgos out there👸🏻 We are mad critical of ourselves and others, so this week go a bit easier. It’s all going to work out regardless of how critical you are :)
