By Guest Blogger Kristen Joy Hester AKA The Billionaire Bride
Sitting down to this blog post has been an interesting experience. Normally I don’t struggle to find words, and in fact, the opposite is generally true. Most of the time I have too many thoughts, too many words. Brevity has never been one of my strengths. After Leeann explained that the concept of this most recent blog series was about self-worth, I knew I had a lot to say about the topic. In fact, the entirety of my poetry from the last ten years is a personal journey of recognizing my own self-worth.
But suddenly, as I am sitting down to gather my thoughts into one coherent piece, I am at a loss for words.
How can I summarize the past ten years into one brief, piece of writing?
How can I explain all the details and prior knowledge so that this will even make any sense?
What if I leave out an important point?
What if no one else thinks this is even any good?
Fear Analysis Paralysis
These are questions that have plagued me my entire life. Chronic perfectionism and high achievement have often gotten the best of me. At one point in my life, my fear of failure would have caused me just to not show up, and my fear of disappointment would have made me feel as if I needed to hide. And even though those thoughts are running rampant in my head as I type this, I can recognize growth in myself because now, not showing up isn’t an option anymore.
Writing Changed My Life
Calling myself a writer is also interesting. I’ve been writing for ten years, and only in the last year and a half have I felt as if I deserved to have this title. I’ve never been formally published, and I don’t write poetry in the same style as everyone else, but writing has been the only thing that kept my sanity intact, the only outlet I had to express thoughts and feelings when there was no one else around to listen. And in looking back over the content that I produced in some of the most difficult circumstances of my life, what I see is that my circumstances have nothing to do with how I now view my self-worth.
What began as dark and heavy writing ten years ago no longer exists. Overall, my writing tells the story of a woman who lost herself trying to be what everyone wanted her to be, and it took losing everything that she had just to understand that the best she had to offer the world was to simply be herself. The woman I am today did not exist a few years ago and, had this creative outlet not been available to me, living in Fort Worth and calling myself a poet would have been impossible.
Notes About This Poem
This poem is about realizing that the ultimate ‘enemy’ lives within myself. ‘You,’ in the context of this poem, is me. Essentially, ‘you’ and ‘I’ are the same, and I am merely speaking to myself. While enemies certainly exist outside of myself, I have discovered that in processing difficult moments with others within society, the ultimate trickster lives in the part of myself that feels as though I am not good enough and can’t seem to accept that I deserve goodness or fullness. Unraveling why this limiting belief exists within myself is complicated.
In the Art of War, Sun-Tzu says to, “know your enemy.” Writing has helped me uncover the truth about myself apart from the thoughts and feelings of the world around me. Writing has given me an outlet to express difficult and complex emotions in a safe space. Furthermore, when I reflect on something I have written, hindsight helps me to identify various facets of this ‘enemy’ that lives within self-doubt. Conquering this enemy must begin by giving it a name and descriptive features. Putting these thoughts that just seem to float around in my head down into words on paper allows for a better understanding of where and why my emotions exist. Once this happens, I have a better understanding of how these enemies function, as well as ways to ultimately defeat them.
You are a woman of your word.
You haven’t always been that way,
but when you find a cause worth fighting for,
you fight with your fists, your guns a-blazin’,
trigger finger ready to fire at a moment’s notice,
the pen always waiting to expose injustice,
to call on the carpet the ones that threaten the ones you love,
the ideals you hold dear,
because if there is any cause that’s worth fighting for in an already God-forsaken world,
it is every beautiful being that was born in your mind,
every idea that was written down on paper,
your trail to salvation,
your pathway to forgiveness,
even when the one you must forgive is yourself.
because if you aren’t reason enough to fight,
reason enough to survive,
then every other fight you engage in just misses the mark,
misses the point,
because your life is important,
your still-beating heart matters,
especially the pieces that people say are broken,
and when you are finally able to recognize your truths as falsehoods,
you fire your gun,
you pull on that trigger,
because your fullness will not be diminished,
your brilliance will not be extinguished,
because you are important,
especially when someone says that you are not.
so you fight, so you weep,
so you mourn,
because your tears are what’s needed to let go,
your tears are what’s needed to move on,
your tears are what’s needed to grow,
your tears,
working in tandem with the weapon of your words,
because no one,
because no thing,
because nothing will steal your namesake,
and rob you of joy.
– Kristen (Joy is not just my middle name) Hester
