Good evening, everybody. How are y'all doing? Welcome to the show. Got a great show planned for you. We're going to be

spending the next two hours working on improving your mental health and your self-worth and self-esteem.

Always a goal. My work has a few threads that are always kind of woven into it. So regardless of what the

topic is, we might be talking about. I was trying to work on people working on acceptance and authenticity, which are keystones of mental health, feeling as

though you can be your total and full self at all times in all places around all people.

Now, of course, that's going to shift and change. There's different identities and different

social locations that we have to occupy, and that's going to create some shift and some change.

But what does it really mean to have self-worth and self-esteem?

It's somewhat of a buzzword we throw around, and there's really cute memes about it,

and some public figures have said things like, if you can't love yourself, how the heck are you going to love somebody else?

Well, actually, it's not true.

It's pretty, um, it's a, it's a, it's a system. It's reinforcing. Yes, we want to work on self

love and we also need to have our self-worth reflected back to us. And sometimes before we can

love ourselves, we have to receive love from others. That's how it actually begins. We are not born with any sense

of ourselves. And we are born into a world where it's already been established who has more

worth than than others. It's already been established what you have to look like to be seen as desirable,

what you have to look like and how you have to act, what your identity has to be,

to be employable or datable or to be seen as a worthy parent. All these structures are in place.

We have white supremacy, which determines whiteness to be the most ideal or legitimate.

We have a heterocentric culture, which normalizes the norms and rights of passage of heterosexuality.

We are very ciscentric, where the trans or non-binary or gender-fluid experience

isn't something that's centered or always advocated for or prioritized.

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