Existence as proof of worth

This is something I keep returning to lately, perhaps because so much in our culture and systems insists on shouting the opposite in a variety of ways. However, there is a quietly but equally insistent voice inside me that keeps questioning the suggestion that we are only as good as what we offer, how useful we are, how kind we are being, how much we are coping, producing, contributing, improving.

Existence as proof of worth says something much simpler, and much harder to live by. That being here is already enough. That our breath, our presence, our messy, unfinished, very human aliveness does not require validation by any measure other than its own existence.

The word proof  feels uncomfortable as I write it. Proof suggests a judge, a standard, or a case to be made. I am choosing to use it anyway, imperfectly, aware that the language I have available is shaped by the very values I am questioning. In using it, I am committing to the idea that the demand for proof itself may be the wrong starting point, and letting that tension show.

Pat and me

Some of the clearest ways I have felt this have come through relationships. The most profound one being married to a man that I feel is one of the most successful humans I know, yet who has absolutely no attachment to the normal route to success.

Again, the word success pulls us back into the value systems I am questioning. I am choosing to use it as a way of reclaiming it, because what Pat has helped me see is that success can look very different when it is defined on our own terms.

Being yourself, having sustainable, loving relationships, serving from a place of honesty and letting go of what does not belong to you is success to us. Also, having skills, but not feeling compelled to use them for other people’s consumption if we do not actually want to, instead sharing them from a place of generosity and joy. He has taught me that living this way feels good becasue it is spacious and not at all tiring in the way all the proving stuff is.

Existence as enough also came up when I was recovering from my mastectomy and physically could not do much. I found myself forced into stillness, which brought up mixed feelings that had been queuing up in the busyness of my usual way of life. What helped was daily journalling, listening to what was already there. By sitting with my feelings and letting what emerged be expressed, I received messages through my writing that felt deeply personal and quietly healing. I did not need anyone else to tell me it was beautiful. It reached a place in me that felt redemptive beyond reason. It felt like a gift.

I have felt this too when I have been forgiven. Forgiven beyond what I thought possible. When I have been loved beyond where I saw myself as unlovable. When my mind had created bars and a prison that did not really exist. When sides of me I thought should be kept in the dark were met with care. Just by being me. Messy me, and all of it loved.

Art by Jolene Sheehan

When I try to picture existence as proof of worth, I think of trees. The full cycle of them. Budding shoots. Golden leaves falling. Strong green leaves. Bare branches. All of it part of the life of the tree. Yes, trees support us as humans. They convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. They are homes for birds and ecosystems. But that is me seeing them through the filter of what they give to me. I also think of the trees that are twisted, struck by lightning, fruitless, fallen. Still trees. Still part of something larger. Alive, changing, returning.

Sunlight through our ''stained glass'' windows

I think of light too. The way it shines and illuminates things. The way it creates beauty. The way it casts through some mocked up stained glass windows that Pat and I created for an advent display on our estate. The beauty is partly intentional, partly accidental. Even if nobody else ever sees it, because it requires the light being on inside the house and darkness outside, I am sitting there watching it projected onto my wall for my own enjoyment. That feels like enough.

I think of quiet moments with myself. A swell of emotion that comes like a full orchestra in the back of a beautiful film, but I am the only one in the audience. My capacity to experience emotion does not seem to need an outcome. It does not need to be articulated or made useful. It just needs to be felt.

And still, the pull away from this is constant. It shows up everywhere. In my work. In my earlier attempts to find my place in the world. In my appearance when I was younger, aching to be beautiful because the world told me, and still tells me, that above any attributes or accolades, nothing is as important as beauty. I thought beauty would earn me love.

Even now, caring less than I once did, ageing and changing, often in scruffy clothes and with smudged makeup or a bare face, I notice how much I still want to be admired. There is an equation I seem to have absorbed that says admiration equals worth.

Hall of Mirrors

This shows up in other places too. When I do something I am unsure about and do not get the response I hoped for, there is that familiar ache that says it did not matter. It shows up in how hard it can be to truly rest, with even rest feeling like it should achieve something. I saw it when I got into art and began making several pieces a day. At first it was a release. Then, quietly, it became something to maintain.

When I feel rooted in worth, there is a different quality to how I work. Then comes a steadiness and a trust that things will flow when I partner with life and the right people. When that sense slips, the pattern feels familiar ; pushing, performing, overthinking, seeking reassurance, brief relief, then repeat until exhaustion.

Motherline Workshop

In my work with Joy Ethic, I often see something else happen. People arrive thinking they need to bring something valuable, (a good story, strong memory, something articulate or wise). And then, as they settle, something shifts. They laugh connect and forget the patchwork quilt of rules they have made. They remember themselves and they listen. They are quiet and moved. They create and express simply because they are alive. None of this is earned. It emerges because they are there together underneath the drive to earn enoughness.

Working with people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities has made this especially visible to me. People who are so often positioned by productivity-driven systems as receivers rather than contributors. And yet how rich and alive those spaces can be. Full of connection, humour, and presence. It makes me question what those systems are actually built to reward, and at what cost.

I remember feeling frustrated as a secondary school teacher, watching an education system so fixed that young people who might never fully read, write, or speak in the expected ways were still taught to those metrics. And then seeing what happens when people are supported to connect, to follow what they care about, to be themselves. During lockdown, when lessons fell away and I focused instead on conversation, I saw how much wellbeing shifted simply through being heard and connected.

Existence as proof of worth asks for a quiet reversal. Not I am worthy because I contribute, but I contribute because I am worthy. And sometimes, more quietly still, I am worthy even when what I give cannot be seen or measured.

There is a part of me - the part that wants validation - that I do not want to edit out of this. I am curious about it rather than ashamed of it. I want to understand what it is asking for, and how it learned to speak so loudly. Perhaps it does not need to disappear, just to be held in a wider view.

The same feels true of the inner critic. That voice that believes its job is to keep me safe by making sure I am doing enough, being enough. I no longer see it as an enemy. More as tired. Loyal. Overworked. Sometimes it helps to simply let it know that, in this moment at least, there is no trial taking place.

This way of seeing does not make life passive. Things still matter, action still changes things, stories still shape us and care and repair will always count. What seems to change is the foundations they are built on get stronger. When worth is not constantly on the line, there is more honesty and gentleness as well as less performance. There is more room to listen and respond to what is actually happening.

I cannot say I live this all the time nor have I figured it out. But I do practise it, forget it, notice myself drifting then I remember again, often through other people.

Why am I writing this? I think I want whoever you are, even if that is just future me, to finish reading this feeling a little more settled and a little more spacious. Knowing that existence as proof of worth is not something to master. It is something to keep returning to. Like rebuilding a sandcastle after the waves have claimed it. Like making a den in the woods until the wind breaks it. Each return teaching the body something simple and hard to remember. That when we stop trying to justify ourselves, there is room not just to live, but to thrive.