When I Decided I Was Trash

I woke up to yelling and the sounds of a scuffle outside my bedroom window in the middle of the night.

I was 13.

The sound was my brother in a fist fight with a police officer.

The whole street had come out to watch him get arrested, again. It was like an episode of "Cops". The one where the person getting arrested acts like a disrespectful idiot and the mom (my mom) is sobbing inconsolably in the middle of the street in her bathrobe while they throw her son in the back of the car.

We were that family. Trashy.

The seeds of not being good enough had been planted long before this, but, on that night they took root. The singer Jennifer Lopez is known as Jenny from the block. I was Jenny from the wrong side of the tracks.

I spent most of my adult life feeling like trash and this is why. But, when people see my house now or my marriage and family they would never guess this is the secret that I carried around with me.

The reality is that I am not trash, nor was I ever. But, I was raised in a house where events happened that made me believe things about myself that weren’t true.

I hope you were never witness to your brother getting arrested or something equally terrible, especially when you are only 13. But here is what I want you to know, whatever not enoughness you are feeling is tied to something that has absolutely nothing to do with you.

If I do one thing well in the world, I hope it’s that I free at least one person from believing they are trashy or not good enough. Because it’s a lie and we have to stop living these lies. And that lie shows up everytime we say “I’m fine” and we just aren’t.

If you’ve ever held yourself back from signing up for a strategy session with me because you don’t think you’re good enough to get the benefit of coaching or you don’t think you deserve the investment in you, girlfriend no one has ever felt worse about themselves than me. There is likely nothing you’ve said or thought about yourself where I haven’t thought something similar. Let’s talk. Go here to schedule an appointment.

With love,

Jen