August 14, 2001
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bdreamwalker's August 14 entry prompts me to post what I have learned about self-esteem.
For many, many years friends told me that I was treating myself badly and that I had to learn to "love myself." I thought I did love myself. A lot of what they saw as self-destructive behavior was the confusion of bipolar disorder. A lot of it was because I grew up as the eldest of four children with two alcoholic parents, my mother bipolar and my father emotionally frozen, and I was the poster child for co-dependence. Everybody else's problems were more important than mine and I was always striving for perfection and doing pratfalls.
Eventually the bipolar ebbs and flows totally eroded my life. October 1995 I walked up and down Capitol Hill, Seattle, looking for one last miracle, a sign in a window saying "Room and board for one manic-depressive writer and computer programmer, right now!" Finally I stood halfway up the hill and said, "I’m 46 years old, broke, homeless, out of work, sick, manic-depressive, with bad teeth, I weigh 185 pounds and my tits hang down to my navel. I have no place to go." 46 years of defense systems fell off and crashed on the sidewalk.
I began gaining in self-esteem from that day on.
One of the blessings in the months to come was the Church of Mary Magdalene, a local Seattle ministry for homeless women. One day at church Rev. Jean Kim asked, "How do you get self-esteem?" Lots of answers were offered, from "accomplishments" to "doing what's right" or "being true to yourself." Then she stumped us with, "So where does a six-month-old baby's self-esteem come from?"
As Rev. Kim pointed out, a six-month-old baby's self-esteem comes from being loved, unconditionally. What I had learned about self-esteem was that it means you don't have to defend anything about yourself. And then you can move forward.
Self-esteem isn't a result. It's a foundation.
By the way: Within the next month I found shelter, treatment, an income, lots of work to do with homeless empowerment groups. I stood up and talked to City Councils in three week old clothes and three day old hair. They listened, and apparently didn’t think about what I looked like any more than I did, even though they hardly ever did exactly what I told them.
Out of Limbo
I come
to find
myself
scattered
across the pavement
I search
creating
with found objects
a life.
Comments (1)
Your post is inspirational. Sometimes it is easy to get lost in others problems and ignore our own. But the first step for any major life change is to accept ourselves.
Love the poem you wrote, will be checking back often
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