Stu's Blog

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Holding My Value


What does it mean to hold your value once you have established it? This is a special place that any gay man who has had low self esteem makes his way to appreciating the work and the persistence needed to achieve it. What does it feel like? It's precious and it feels powerful and good and until we know how to hold it, it can also be fragile and unstable.


But our life's work is to strengthen it, learn how to hold it more carefully and to value it – that is value - our value that we must do whatever it takes to not let it slip away or to let go of it or allow it to be destroyed by someone else who has no understanding of it. Especially if another does not respect it the way we have come to.

Alanis Morissette's song 'So Unsexy' is about how easy it is to spiral out our own sense of value when we compare ourselves to someone we think has greater value or worth than us. In the song she suggests that the initial 'wound' comes from her relationship with her father and being rejected by him at the age of 13. As a consequence she has gone through life 'projecting' rejection and abandonment onto other people, relationships and various situations. This feels so debilitating and painful. Most of us know this feeling or have felt it at some point.

The last line in the song however holds the answer to how we hold on to our self esteem and value in the face of challenge. She sings:

'Oh these rejections – how they disappear quickly,

The moment I decide not to abandon me.'

SO SAY TODAY:

No matter what, I will hold my value and in the face of any given challenge today

I will NOT abandon myself.

 

 

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