Self-Worth Is Wealth: The Pillar of Courage, Strength & Overcoming Challenges

Part 2: The Pillar of Courage, Strength & Overcoming Challenges

Self-Worth Is Wealth

The pillars of wealth are not necessarily in a perfect, linear order. They are part of a whole system. Each one supports the others, and each one asks us to become more honest with ourselves.

But this pillar — courage, strength, and overcoming challenges — often feels like one of the first gates we have to walk through. Because honestly, the hardest part of healing is getting started.

Healing Begins the Moment You Decide

It is that moment when you know something is wrong, but you are not quite ready to say it out loud yet.

✨You know the relationship is no longer right...You know the friendship is one-sided...You know the habit is draining your life force.

✨You know the job, the pattern, the identity, or the version of yourself you have been clinging to cannot come with you into the next season. And yet, leaving is hard. Ending things is hard.

✨Choosing yourself after years of abandoning yourself can feel terrifying. But that is courage. ✨Not the polished, inspirational-poster kind of courage. The real kind...The kind that shakes your hands...The kind that makes your stomach drop...The kind that forces you to admit, “I cannot keep living like this.”

For me, this part of my healing journey is represented through a few mugs. The New York mug holds a very specific kind of memory. When I was in New York, my friends and I went to a sex museum. In the gift shop, I bought a book on intimacy. At the time, I was in a long-distance relationship, and I sent the book to my boyfriend.

❌He laughed at me.

❌He told me I was weird.

At the time, I brushed it off. I thought maybe I was being too much. Too curious. Too open. Too interested in creating deeper connection. But looking back now, I see it differently. A person who is unwilling to explore intimacy with you is not only closed off physically. They may also be closed off emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and even in the deeper places where partnership is supposed to grow. And I stayed with that man for nine years. That is the part that hurts to admit.

Because sometimes the deepest grief is not just what someone did to you. It is realizing how long you tolerated it. I thought I was in love, but in many ways, I was settling for the bare minimum. And part of my healing has been learning to say: I no longer settle for bare minimum love.

I Chose Myself When No One Else Would

That is self-worth. That is wealth.

The Maryland mug is different. That mug gets to stay. Maryland represents the version of me who took a chance on herself. I had an opportunity to build a really good career, but it required me to move across the country by myself. No family. No familiar friends. No safety net. Just an opportunity, a gut feeling, and the willingness to find out what I was made of.

That season showed me my own strength. It showed me my grit, my tenacity, and my ability to build a life in a place where I did not know anyone. And that matters too. Because not everything from the past needs to be destroyed.

Some memories are evidence...Some memories are proof that you have been brave before...Some memories remind you:

✨I can do hard things.

✨I can begin again.

✨I can trust myself in unfamiliar rooms.

That is also part of the courage pillar.

Then there is the Twin Cities mug. This one is funny because I do not even think I have been to the Twin Cities. I picked it up because I was collecting mugs. I probably saw it at an airport and thought, “Sure, why not?” And that is exactly why it needed to go...Because sometimes healing is not dramatic. Sometimes healing is simply realizing, “I do not have a reason to keep this.”

That can apply to objects, habits, obligations, conversations, identities, and even people. How many things do we keep in our lives simply because they are already there?

The person who calls only to vent.

The situation that benefits everyone except you.

The habit you outgrew years ago.

The version of yourself you keep performing because other people recognize her.

Not everything needs a traumatic backstory to be released.

You Can Outgrow What Never Hurt You

Sometimes the reason is simply: This no longer belongs to me. And that is enough.

Then there is San Diego. My ex and I used to go to San Diego all the time. There were good memories there, and I do not need to pretend there were not. But this mug holds the memory of one specific night. The last time we were there together, I was exhausted. Earlier in the day, I had agreed to go out, and we did. But by the end of the night, I wanted to go home and go to bed.

And because I no longer wanted to keep drinking at a bar, he called me a liar and a piece of shit. That moment changed something in me. Not because it was the first bad moment. But because it was the moment my self-respect finally kicked back in.

We had been together for nine years. We owned a house together. We had built an entire life.

And still, something inside of me said: No more.

That is the kind of courage people do not always talk about...The courage to disappoint someone who benefits from your silence...The courage to walk away from a life you helped build...The courage to burn down the version of your future that was costing you your soul.

Sometimes strength is not staying...Sometimes strength is leaving.

Strength Doesn't Always Look Like Staying

Sometimes overcoming the challenge means admitting that the challenge is the life you keep trying to survive. And sometimes self-worth is the match. That is why this pillar matters.

Courage, strength, and overcoming challenges are not just about conquering the outside world.

They are about reclaiming yourself from the places where you learned to shrink. They are about telling the truth. They are about releasing what no longer honors you. They are about choosing the woman you are becoming over the life that taught you to settle. Self-worth is wealth because it changes everything.

✨It changes what you tolerate. It changes who gets access to you.

✨It changes the rooms you enter. It changes the love you accept.

✨It changes the opportunities you pursue. It changes the way you speak to yourself. It changes the life you are willing to build.

And once your self-worth comes back online, you cannot un-know it.

❌You cannot keep pretending the bare minimum is enough.

❌You cannot keep calling survival love.

❌You cannot keep abandoning yourself and calling it loyalty.

At some point, the woman inside of you stands up and says: We are not doing this anymore. That moment is sacred...That moment is the beginning...That moment is wealth.

✨Godmother Reflection✨

Where in your life are you being asked to practice courage right now?

Is there something you know you need to release, even if it feels hard?

Is there a part of your past that needs to be smashed, and another part that needs to be honored as proof of your strength?

Healing is not always love and light. Sometimes healing is the moment your self-respect finally kicks in. And sometimes, making space for the woman you are becoming means breaking what taught you to settle.

Love you very much.

You got this.

Danielle Rae | Godmother of Women