What is your Value?

This is not the first time I've been asked this question. Up until two years ago, I defined my value by my relationships. Then I lapsed into Indigo with suicidal tendencies. I was asked what my value was at the Annual Gathering and said "I have no value."

1-2 weeks ago, while asking myself WHY I automatically felt sad after doing something praiseworthy or at least pleasurable to me, an old corner of my psyche piped up and said A Woman Without a Man has No Value.

Now that's conditioning bullshit and I know it. This can be traced right back to my mother and aunts. I grew up honestly believing that I had to be a wife and mother to be complete, to have Value. I'm not going back into the nonsense of my early twenties. It made sense at the time, especially when my parents informed me I was NOT allowed to go to Denver for pharmacology school without a husband.

So! Roughly sixteen years, one divorce, two children and one widowing later, what is my Value?

I have no idea.

My first instinct is to default to my relationships, which I've been trying NOT to do for 18 months now. It's hard to quantify my skills as Values. It's harder to quantify my beliefs as Values. Value is arbitrary. Value is Subjective. Value is defined by the person using it.

Gods, I'm SO glad ex SLB is gone. This would devolve into SUCH an argument. (Realizing ex SLB was an excellent way to put my first marriage firmly behind me was another Oh RLY? moment last week)

I am Valuable because I...

because I...

love?

Hum. I suppose, but not quite.

I believe it's time to revisit Simple Abundance. This sounds like a job for "Mining Your Acre of Diamonds".