What I Learned About Worth Before I Had Words For It

I learned early how to leave home.

I was six when I started boarding school. At that age, you don’t dramatize departure, you just learn how to do it well. You pack your things, hug your parents, and then you learn how to adjust in unfamiliar rooms. How to observe before you speak. How to pay attention. How to earn belonging without asking for it.

I was good at that part.

At school, there was always a schedule. Bells. Study hours. Expectations posted clearly on bulletin boards. You didn’t have to wonder what was required of you—you just had to meet it. And I did. I learned how to perform competence before I learned how to ask myself what I actually wanted.

I became hyper-independent. People admire that way of functioning. They tell you you’re mature. Responsible. Disciplined. What they don’t tell you is that it trains you to equate worth with adaptability. With output. With not being a problem.

I carried that lesson with me into college, where I competed as a collegiate athlete.

Track felt familiar because it gave me structure and made expectations clear. Effort was rewarded. Progress could be measured. You showed up. You trained. You pushed. You got faster or you didn’t.

There was comfort in knowing exactly how hard you were supposed to go.

I was surrounded by women who were driven, brilliant, relentless. We compared splits, schedules, goals. We talked about grit. About pushing through. About wanting it badly enough.

And I did want it. I wanted to be excellent. I wanted to be seen as capable. I wanted to prove—though I wouldn’t have used that word then—that I belonged in every room I entered.

What I didn’t realize was that I was learning a belief that would follow me long after the races ended:

If I keep moving, no one will question my value.

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Motion As Proof

After college, when the structure disappeared, I felt it immediately. No training plan. No finish line. No external confirmation that I was doing enough. I didn’t know how to exist without metrics—without something outside of me telling me I was on the right track.

So I created my own.

I launched a storytelling platform called Live Without Apologies. On the surface, it was about encouraging people to live boldly on their own terms. Underneath, it was me trying to claim space without asking permission—part storytelling, part healing, part refusal to shrink.

I spoke boldly on podcasts. I made merch. I showed up on YouTube and told the truth before I knew how to hold it. I confused visibility with clarity. Momentum with alignment. I told myself I was fearless, but really, I was afraid of stopping.

Because stopping meant listening.

And listening meant hearing questions I didn’t yet know how to answer.

Back then, living without apologies meant being bold. Visible. Unfiltered. It meant saying the thing, taking up space, refusing to shrink.

And that mattered. It still does.

What I didn’t yet understand was that visibility and belonging aren’t the same thing.

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Worth Without Evidence

Years later, a trusted friend asked me, “Do you feel like you’re allowed to rest without earning it?”

I laughed first. Then I went quiet.

Because the honest answer was no.

Rest, to me, had always been conditional. Something you arrived at. Something justified by exhaustion or accomplishment. Something you earned by proving you’d done enough.

There was another layer I hadn’t learned yet, one that didn’t come from discipline or drive or grit.

I hadn’t learned how to trust myself when there was nothing to prove.
How to sit still without narrating my value.
How to let a season be quiet without interpreting it as failure.

Sometimes that looks like choosing not to speak.
Sometimes it looks like not turning every insight into content.
Sometimes it looks like letting a day be ordinary and unfinished.

I’m still unlearning. Still noticing when I reach for motion out of habit instead of conviction. Still catching myself when I start moving just to avoid standing still.

But I’m learning, slowly and deliberately that worth doesn’t disappear when the schedule clears. That I don’t have to be exceptional to be grounded. That I don’t need to earn my own trust.

Looking back now, I can see what I couldn’t then: that even in my striving, God was present. That some of the pauses I resisted were invitations. That some of the redirections I misunderstood were protection.

I planned my way. God directed my steps.

If I could speak to the version of myself packing for boarding school, or training as a collegiate athlete, or launching something before it was ready, I wouldn’t tell her to stop striving.

I would tell her this instead:

You don’t have to earn your worth.
You don’t have to prove your belonging.
You were never an afterthought.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are His works.

And learning to live from that truth takes more courage than running ever did.

Unapologetically,
Abbey