Have you ever experienced difficulty feeling loved or appreciated?
Have you found it difficult to heal from losing a loved one?
I remember eagerly waiting for my USMLE step 1 scores to arrive.
A few weeks earlier, my father, a practicing dermatologist till then, had just gone into a coma following a viral infection. That was my first trip to India about 8 months after my own marriage, to help wean him off life support. In the meantime, I had to postpone my step 1 exam by a month to accommodate my trip.
On reaching India, I found my father might survive if we changed the facility. So we got him transferred to a center for neurological care.
On returning to the US after a month, I gave my step 1 exam. I remember gingerly waiting for the results. I did not know why I was so anxious about the results. It was just an exam. There was an option to retake it if needed. I knew very well the circumstances I had gone through just before the exam.
Even then, all the years of academic training which put such an emphasis on the scores and results had made it hard for me to let the Universe handle my scores. Like somehow my worth was tied to my test scores. And I had to ‘perform’ no matter the adversity in my circumstances prior to the test.
In fact, had our educational system not taught us that ultimately it was the ‘proof’ as in the test scores that mattered and not the effort? We were told that it was the destination that mattered and not the journey. What about doing our best and leaving the rest to the Universe? Would that be losing control?
Meanwhile my father survived after our transfer above, and later was transferred to a nursing home where he was slowly regaining his faculties. However, after 8 months he succumbed to a heart attack, just before my step 2.
There were these two big blows to my heart chakra from the above experience:
- Feeling unworthy unless I scored my best and highest no matter what life threw at me
- Grief from my father’s passing away.
What is within us manifests as our external environment. My thoughts of my self-esteem being tied to my scores and grief probably lowered my frequency. They would manifest my external reality. My external circumstances were getting rearranged to match that frequency. Thus repeating the same pain points in different forms.
It repeated in my working life, in the form of my self-worth being tied to the RVU’s I made or to the bonus I made, as well as losing a child during delivery about 6 years after my father’s demise.
In my healing journey, I realized all over again what I had always felt to be true somewhere in my heart: that what matters most is the time we have to spend with the ones we love, and health.
Social status, grades, credentials, were all what the external world had made to be the indicators of our sense of worth.
You are no less worthy than I and vice versa. Because each of us is priceless: we are the divine in human form. Physically and biologically a miracle.
It is only when we remember that we are souls having human bodies and not the other way around that we understand our true worth: precious. And we have always been that way and always will be.
I am sure you may have had your own share of similar experiences.
How has it shown up for you?
How have you been able to handle it?
