The Day I Learned My Worth Was Conditional

At my sixth-grade graduation, I learned just how much my self-worth was tied to my performance. I was a smart kid and also very athletic. I was pretty gifted in most of my classes. I remember my mother sitting in the audience with my Aunt Joyce. I was one of a handful of Black sixth graders in a predominantly white school.

Everyone called me shy, but underneath, I was angry.

Angry that I had to ride a dusty bus twenty minutes from my predominantly Black neighborhood to a school where I always felt like an outsider.

Angry that my mother was overworked and depressed.

Angry because I was already painfully aware that my childhood looked nothing like my peers’.

I kept getting called up over and over again to receive awards for academics and for participation in various clubs. I think I was most proud of receiving the Presidential Fitness Award. It was given to kids who excelled in physical fitness tests as a recognition of achievement and consistency. I had earned it for three consecutive years. That year, I became the only student in the entire school to receive it for a fourth year. When my name was called, I stood tall. I remember the pride in my mother’s face.

Later, though, she made a remark. She mentioned how one of her coworkers, who was also the mother of one of my close friends, seemed upset that her daughter hadn’t received any awards. My mother sounded proud. Not just proud of me, but proud that she had something over this woman she secretly despised. I couldn’t name how I felt at the time, but I think I started to understand that even my achievements weren’t fully mine. They were currency. They were ways to feel worthy. For her, for me, for us both.

At the end of the ceremony, the teachers began giving out the final prize: the President’s Education Award. When they started calling names, mine was among them. But when I stepped up on the stage with my hands out to receive the certificate, the teacher handing them out looked confused and said, “Oh no, not you.”

Except, I was on that list too.

I stood there, awkwardly, while she double-checked. Even though my name was on the award. I felt the audience shifting in their seats. When she finally confirmed that I was supposed to receive it, she handed it over, her face turning slightly red. I walked off that stage angrier than I had ever been. I knew my grades were better than most of the students who had already been called. And I knew this had everything to do with my race, even if no one would say it out loud.

Something clicked in me that day. I felt invisible. I felt ashamed. A moment that should have been filled with pride became a defining wound.

After that, I kept performing. I kept chasing perfect grades and polished outcomes. Whenever I achieved something, it gave me the briefest glimpse of worthiness. It made me feel like maybe I did deserve to be seen. Maybe I did deserve to be honored.

That day at graduation was the beginning of a pattern I’m still trying to break. I learned to equate my worth with what I could do, not who I was. I performed, achieved, succeeded. It was not out of joy, but out of a desperate need to prove I belonged in rooms that made me feel small. And underneath it all was a child who never really got to own her worth, because it was always something to earn.

This is the wound I return to again and again. The ingrained belief that I have to prove my value in order to be loved or seen.

But I’m starting to unlearn it.

Slowly, I’m beginning to understand: self-worth isn’t a prize. It’s a birthright. And I never had to earn it in the first place.

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Thanks so much for reading🤍

If this resonates with you, drop a comment below. How did you first learn to tie your worth to achievement? And what has healing looked like since?