From the moment I took my first breath I had something to prove. I didn’t know this at the time of course. I wasn’t some genius, miracle baby. I wasn’t special, precious in any way. In fact I was just a baby girl, born as the second child to the eldest son much to the relief of my mother. She thanked me in silence for coming second and not first so that she could fulfil her duty of providing an eldest grandson of the eldest son to a family where this mattered. It mattered greatly.

It mattered so greatly that I knew my inadequacy for affection at a tender age. There was no reason or explanation. No one questioned it. This was how my world worked and all I could do was to work with it. And work it I did - for the next decades I worked as hard as I could. I worked hard to prove my worth. I worked hard to prove my mother’s worth. I worked hard to prove I was just as worthy of affection and of love. As I grew older I worked hard to prove my worth as a friend, a girlfriend and then a wife. I also continued to work hard to prove my worth as the second daughter to the eldest son and a granddaughter who was still not worthy.

For years I knew no other way except to continue to fight the void of being unworthy, the dread of being not good enough. Being meticulous and cautious became a way of life. Being oversensitive and fearful of judgment became normality. Inner turmoil was simply an aside and insomnia a minor irritation. And then I got ill. My body said no. Did I stop? Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Except what I didn’t expect was the power of my body. My body screamed at me. Despite being exhausted, battered from decades of neglect and fighting a rare illness, my body made me take a deep dive into pain, life, meanings, love, demons, friendships, truths, self worth, traumas, values, family, darkness and inevitably my younger self.

In finally facing head on to my troubled body and mind, I made one invaluable discovery. I realised that from that very moment I took my first breath, it wasn’t my worth that I was forever proving. It was my existence. An existence that I had absolutely no control over. Being born a girl, a second daughter to the eldest son.