We are all products of our childhood — the good, the bad, and the ugly. My Uncle Khalid once said, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one with their words and life traumas.” Those words stayed with me, haunting me as I reflected on the moment I began to disqualify myself. It wasn’t just one moment; it was the accumulation of many, tied to three things: church, Christmas, and feeling irrelevant as a child.

Growing up, I was taught a powerful belief — that good children were rewarded at Christmas, that God loved the obedient. It was a lesson my Sunday school teacher drilled into us with certainty, a belief that wrapped itself around my young mind like a noose. Now imagine a ten-year-old girl waking up on Christmas morning. No tree. No gifts. Only silence. The kind of silence that echoes louder than the joy she imagined would fill the day. And worse, a mother who wasn’t there — a mother who, above all else, should have been there.

On that day, something in me broke. I didn’t just feel disappointed; I felt dismissed. Unseen. Irrelevant. It was as though I’d failed some cosmic test of goodness and obedience, the kind I thought God and the world required. And so, I disqualified myself — not just from Christmas, but from deserving love, attention, and worth.

Looking back, I see how this belief seeped into everything, a thread tying together all the moments I felt less than. But back then…