Building my own sense of self-esteem is still a process.  I don’t remember when I really started paying attention to my sense of self and how I felt about me, but I remember events as a teenager and even younger than that, when kids made fun of me and I thought that I was a pile of crap.

My family was poor growing up.  Once we found ourselves in small-town Montana, it was just me, my mom and my sister.  We didn’t have a lot money, food was donated to us and most glaring was that I wore hand-me-down clothes. I would go to school and older kids would say “that used to be my shirt.”  It was a small enough town that people knew.  That made me feel bad.

And that feeling of “am I worthy?” has stayed with me.  If I messed up at work, if I saw another mother who had a baby at the same time as me who was skinnier, my mind would jump to the comparison and I would think to myself “I am not as good as her.”  I also am a firm believer that women are so much harder on each other than is reasonable and as a result, we are so much more critical of ourselves.  Sometimes I look at a gorgeous woman, who is probably about the same age as me, whose hair is long and done up, who is taller than I am and thinner, wearing beautiful boots, who has a really great purse and I think that her life must be perfect.  She has it all together and here I am slogging along, with a saggier neck,  my worn tennis shoes on and my hair in a clip, because I haven’t even showered yet.

Maybe she glanced at me and thought to herself, “I wish I didn’t have to dress up.  I want to just laze about with my hair in a clip and put on my tennis shoes and work in my garden.”  Seriously, who knows.  All I know is that I’ve talked to women who tell me they think I have it all together, when on the inside I’m an emotional volcano barely keeping the tears from my eyes.  Why do they think I have it all together?  I am looking at them thinking the exact same thing!

This is the thing with self-esteem.  It comes from within.  I try and look at myself in the mirror every single day and think, “I’ve got today.  This minute.  This second. And right now, I am doing my best and I love myself for it.”  I am a person of worth and even if no one ever tells me that or sees that or thinks that, I know that!  Even on my very worst day when my emotions pour out of me and I feel like I am failing at everything, I know that just by virtue of being a human being, completely unique in the world that I am competent and I am worth it. 

The ebb and flow of that esteem is part of living.  But under it all is the firm foundation of the love I have for myself.