Overcoming Trauma to Develop Self-Worth

I had the good fortune of visiting my brother, Ryan, in Boise last weekend. I hadn’t seen him in a year. We always have a great time together. We riff together better than I do with anyone else. We never go more than a few minutes without laughing really hard.

A lot of the times that we’re cracking up are making fun of family. Specifically, how we were raised. Ryan and I had odd childhoods, but nothing that would kill a person.

On this trip to visit Ryan, I brought up how throughout my whole life, my family has labeled me a bitch. They have called me a bitch directly. But it comes in all sorts of ways: dramatic, mean, angry, a bad person. Or I need to calm down, I need to get an attitude readjustment. There’s probably a dozen more ways that my mom, dad, step dad, and brother would let me know that they thought I was a bitch.

These comments usually came out during a heated discussion or argument. It started by me expressing my opinion. And would escalate from there.

One of these moments that was significantly more lighthearted and funnier was when I was 19 years old and I told my mom I wanted to work at Trader Joe’s. She replied, “You’re not nice enough” and we both laughed. The staff at Trader Joe’s is notoriously chipper and cheery, not exactly me. But it still felt like I had been punched in the…