Dear Gerald,
If there’s one lesson you’ve learned in all the years you’ve been on this Earth, is that you were worthy of respect all along. 

You knew deep inside your heart since you were little that you desired to be respected like a lot of your peers, family members, teachers, celebrities, and authority figures who you saw had a lot of respect, like the Reverends and Pastors you grew up watching preaching in a few Baptist churches. 

But respect was rare in your early journey. Not a lot of people shared your deep belief that you were worthy of respect. You were undermined, dismissed, and belittled just for existing how you wanted to exist. 

That soft-spoken sensitive soul just wanted to enjoy being comfortable in his own skin. But the troublemakers refuse to let that happen. 

These experiences of disrespect created doubt & inner demons that you would wrestle with throughout your teens and early 20s, while you tried to figure out who you were and where you fit in a microwave world. 

The inner demons desperately wanted to take you out and celebrate victory. But, something made you keep fighting, because you didn’t want them to win the war. 

Today in 2023, you still stand, feeling stronger than ever. Plus, you can say without hesitation that not only are you worthy of respect, but that anything less than the respect you expect is unacceptable. 

The disrespect you’ve endured throughout your life taught you that respect for self is imperative -  because without it, other people will disrespect you if they have the chance to. 

You’re worthy of respect because you’ve always strived to be a respectable person in a sincere way. The road wasn’t easy to achieve that. But you went through the fire to know what’s acceptable and what’s not when it comes to how you want people to treat you. 

You give people a chance to show why they should be respected and to see if you should respect them. If they failed the test, then they failed your class. 

You’ve learned repeatedly that respect should flow both ways between two people (or more) who appreciate each other. If respect is only flowing one way, the person who isn’t being respected must demonstrate self-love by removing themselves completely from that person. 

It can be a challenge at times to say that we’re worthy of respect if we rarely receive respect from others. But when we have people who care about us and show us how respect for ourselves should look, we can say what’s true in our hearts, that we’re worthy of respect too.

Sincerely,
Gerald