I was listening to Carson Tueller share his story about being a quadriplegic on a podcast when one line hit me like an arrow that embedded itself into my thinking. Even if removed like an arrow would need to be, this one line has permanently left a mark.

Carson said, “I can survive being in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I cannot survive feeling unlovable for the rest of my life.”

I have never heard a truer statement, yet I wonder how many of us are not surviving our own feelings of being unlovable. I have survived all of my most challenging moments in life so far, but the one thing with which I struggle the most is the very thing that I know I cannot survive.

As my readers might remember, I survived wearing hand-me-down, high water pants when I was a child. Yet, I carried away with me a feeling that I was somehow less lovable because of my clothing. Even as a seven or eight year old, I knew girls wouldn’t want to be my friend and boys wouldn’t like me. This reminds me of all of the students who will survive heading back to school this month, but internally may not be surviving their own feelings of being unlovable.

August is my birthday month, and it marks for me the last year in this decade of life.

I can survive approaching the half of a century milestone, but the feeling that being older makes me less relevant, less useful, less desirable, less lovable is what I struggle with the most. I have the dearest friends who are decades older than I am whom I love dearly, but I wonder how many of our elders may not be surviving their own feelings of being unlovable.

I admit I cannot survive feeling too hard to love or unworthy of love. And, I wonder how many of my fellow humans are walking or rolling around the planet surviving really hard experiences of life but who are not surviving the feeling of being unlovable. Together, let’s believe the truth about our own lovability and let’s be willing to affirm lovability in others.

Roxanne Converse-Whiting