I recently read Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection. It triggered a lot of soul-searching. It led me to the realization that I define my self-worth based on how well I do things. Thus, I feel very positive about myself while I am at work. I am a productive employee who meets expectations in all areas.
The problem is I am not a productive wife or mother. Being a mother, especially to a preschooler and child with ASD, is so overwhelming. Most of the time as a parent, I feel frustrated, anxious and hopeless. This has produced a wife who is too emotionally and mentally exhausted to contribute much around the house. My husband does all the cooking and laundry at our house. As a wife, I feel lazy, ashamed and like a burden. So while I love being at work, I feel like I am crawling out of my skin at home.
And it’s all because I define my self-worth based on my level of productivity. And I have no idea how to stop this. For me, it’s like the facts are in. My employer is highly satisfied with my performance. If polled, my husband and children would likely say they are not. I’m mean, bristly and short-fused. I’m inattentive, unaffectionate and unhelpful. I can rationalize that these statements are mere conjecture, and even if true, not true all of the time. But even when I can mentally grasp that, I still can’t get those feelings out of my heart.
But today I read this:
“There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.
Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.”
Work Around Your Abyss – Henri Nouwen
Now I feel like I have a road map of sorts. I can see that I have let myself become completely absorbed by my pain at home and it has paralyzed me. I can also see that I have pushed myself so hard at work that it’s allowed me to avoid the pain of ill-defined self-worth. I need to understand this abyss of mine. What led me to this place? What purpose has this torturous self-worth served for me? Why is it so hard to settle for good enough? I don’t know the answers to any of those questions yet, but at least now I have a place to start. Going to work around my abyss, trusting that someday it will close.
Something to Sustain Me 