Loved, Worthy & Whole

The other night, I found myself in an all too familiar dreaded place, but as I laid in the shadows of the night crying profusely, the tears were no longer about me...

When I used to work at IASIS, a health and wholeness center in the GK Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan, every morning, we would gather for a morning ritual. It would end going around the circle as each of us stated our three positive affirmations for the day. I usually held onto the same three positive affirmations every morning.

I am loved.

I am worthy.

I am whole.

Unbeknownst to the rest of my IASIS family, I struggled to say those three simple statements every single morning. I fought my tears to say them. In reality, I felt the exact opposite as I tried to embrace my pregnancy with Haigan and my single motherhood with Aragon. Benito had made it clear to me, that I was no longer his choice and neither were both of these lives of our children. I felt unloved, unworthy and broken in a million pieces. It’s amazing how I found the will each day to keep going on, working, smiling, breathing…

Knowing that Benito now finally has a child he willingly embraces into this world, and that he was there to support their mother as it grew in her womb and as she birthed this creature into being reopens such immense wounds in me because...I never got that...and Aragon and Haigan never got that. The idea that Aragon and Haigan will one day grow up wondering where their father is and learn the reality of it all and feel unloved, unworthy and broken because they weren’t chosen, but another child was...just breaks my heart. What parent would ever want their beloved breathing, beautiful and innocent heart-beings to experience the very same depths of pain and suffering that they had gone through. But as I cried and cried about this inevitable dreaded day that may come, I realized something...

I have long grown away from feeling unloved, unworthy and broken. I know that I am perfectly loved in this world, that there is nothing comparable to my worth here on this earth and I am beautiful and complete just the way I am. This isn’t because anyone told me so, it is just because it is so. I found everything that I am within myself during the deepest and darkest time in my life.

So my boys...because I am their mother, they will know these things too. They will be immensely grounded into the depths of their being to know that their value and worth do not come from anyone or anything, not even me, but from within themselves. So whether or not this dreaded day may come for them and engulf them into an ocean of pain, this too shall pass...and they will come out of it riding the waves beautiful and brilliant as they are destined to be.