You’re Not Bad at Receiving. You Just Learned You Don’t Matter.
I hate celebrating my birthday.
Let me rephrase that: I grew up with emotionally unavailable parents who didn’t make a big deal about my birthday, so I developed a belief that I’m not important, and I have let that water down my birthday for most of my life.
This week, I ran into a friend while surfing, and he asked, “What are you doing for your birthday?”
I immediately felt my chest tighten and replied, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet.”
“Why not? Let’s get some people together and do something fun! Do you want to go for a run? Do you want to go out to eat?”
His excitement would normally be contagious, but the shame had put up armor so thick that it wasn’t letting anything interfere with my plans to wallow in self-pity on my birthday.
After surfing, I grounded in a park. My version of grounding is literally lying on the grass like a loaf. A plumeria tree nearby had recently shed some blossoms, so in addition to the grass, trees, breeze, and sun, I was enjoying the scent of a plumeria.
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
I grew up with an extremely critical mother, so for most of my life, my critical inner voice dominated my daily self-talk. And it wasn’t just critical. It was downright b*tchy and hateful.
Hmmmm, no wonder I hated myself for so much of my life…..
Over the past six years, I have done so much inner work on myself, and my true voice is my dominant voice, so that day, grounded in the grass, I couldn’t logically understand why I still don’t celebrate myself.
Initially, I berated myself.
Why can’t you celebrate yourself?
Just do something fun on your birthday.
What’s wrong with you?
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. The good news about this is that we can also be our own best friends.
I noticed how hard I was being on myself. I instantly switched to self-compassion and got curious about why my birthday was bothering me so much.
My birthday is June 17th, and I have a cousin whose birthday is about a week after mine. Also, some years, my birthday falls on Father’s Day. I never felt like I had a birthday celebration that was unique to me. I always had to share the spotlight with something else.
Also, early on, I learned that being excited about my birthday made me “too much.” When Little Angie would start the birthday countdown on June 1st, all it did was annoy my mom, and I quickly got the message that I was being a burden.
Even in adulthood, my accomplishments were met with backlash. In my 30’s, when I lived in Chicago, I graduated from the Second City Chicago sketch comedy writing program. The final project was a show that was written and produced by my class and performed on the Second City stage. Each student had 1–2 sketches featured in the show.
When I excitedly announced to my mom that two of my scripts were chosen for the show, her immediate response was, “That’s greedy.”
Ok, I totally understand where this comes from. It’s because a younger version of me learned that being excited about myself wasn’t safe.
So, I planned a trip with a friend to the North Shore plumeria farm the day before my birthday to make leis, and I scheduled a massage on my birthday. And I plan on planning more celebrations.
Most importantly, I plan on celebrating myself.
At some point, we have to stop expecting our childhood wounds to heal themselves.
We have to become the adults that our younger selves needed. Nobody else can do that work for us.
For a long time, I thought celebrating myself was selfish. But now I think the opposite is true.
When you never pause to acknowledge yourself, your effort, your growth, your courage, your resilience, and the things you’ve overcome, your brain starts to believe they don’t matter.
You become so focused on the next goal, the next problem, the next thing to fix, that you completely miss your own life. And what you focus on grows.
If you focus on what’s missing, you’ll find more reasons you’re not enough. If you focus on what you’ve built, how far you’ve come, and the things you’re proud of, you’ll find evidence that you’re doing better than you think.
Celebrating yourself is about appreciation. And appreciation is one of the highest forms of energy. It pulls you out of autopilot, quiets the critical inner voice, reminds you that you’re not a project that needs constant fixing, and that you’re a human being who deserves to feel joy right now, not someday after you’ve achieved more.
Every time you stop and acknowledge yourself, you’re creating evidence that you can trust yourself, that your efforts matter, and that you’re capable of doing hard things.
Life is hard. There will always be another challenge, another setback, another reason to wait until later. Which is exactly why we need to celebrate ourselves now. We have survived things that once felt impossible, and we keep showing up.
Abundance isn’t just about money.
Abundance is learning to appreciate your life while you’re living it. It’s the ability to fully receive the good that already exists in your life.
And that changes how you show up everywhere, from your relationships to your career to your bank account. The women who struggle to receive abundance often struggle to receive their own accomplishments too.
Receiving is a skill. If you deflect compliments, downplay accomplishments, brush off support, feel guilty spending money on yourself, and minimize your wins, then underneath all of that is the story, “I don’t matter.” And eventually, opportunities, money, and abundance don’t matter either.
Every time you celebrate yourself, you’re rewriting that story. You’re teaching your nervous system:
I matter.
My life matters.
My joy matters.
My desires matter.
And when you start believing that, you naturally begin receiving more of what’s already trying to make its way to you.
And that genuine, unguarded, unapologetic appreciation for who you are and how far you’ve come is exactly how you become a magnet for more.
So, this year, I’m celebrating my birthday because I’m no longer available for the story that says I don’t matter.
Little Angie started her birthday countdown on June 1st because she knew something that the critical voices in her life tried to take from her. She knew she was worth celebrating.
She still is.
And if you are reading this, so are you.
Glow Tip:
This is something simple you can start implementing in your day-to-day life.
Start small. Celebration doesn’t have to be a plumeria farm and a massage, although I highly recommend both.
This week, try this:
At the end of each day, ask yourself:
What did I do today that deserves to be acknowledged?
Not what you finished on your to-do list or what you produced or optimized or checked off. What did you do that took courage, patience, resilience, or growth, even in a small way?
Then acknowledge it. Out loud. Do a happy dance or sing a song. Or both!
Because every time you pause to celebrate yourself, even in the smallest, most ordinary moments, you are sending your nervous system a message that you are someone worth celebrating.
And your nervous system believes what you show it consistently, not what you tell it once.
Abundance begins when you learn to receive what is already here.
And that’s what it means to shine from the inside.
Why You’re Blocking Abundance Without Realizing It
One more thing before you go.
Celebrating yourself is an act of receiving. And if receiving in general feels uncomfortable, guilty, or like something you have to earn first, then that block is showing up in more places than just your birthday.
It’s showing up in your bank account too.
In Video 8 of my Broke vs. Abundant Energy series, we go deep on why deflecting compliments, help, and generosity are the most overlooked abundance blocks. Because your nervous system cannot tell the difference between rejecting a compliment and rejecting a financial windfall. All it knows is whether receiving feels safe or not.
If it doesn’t, everything you say you want keeps finding a way not to stay.
👉 Watch Video 8: If You Can’t Receive a Compliment, This Is Why Money Feels Hard | How to Make Receiving Effortless
https://youtu.be/kAlCBK4M-gE?si=27eulu2majjmUCMX
We don’t play small anymore.
With Love & Fire,
Angie
https://www.innerglowbyangie.com/
Angie Hawkins is The Inner Glow Coach who helps successful-on-paper women rewrite the money stories that have been costing her voice, visibility, and earning potential so she can show up as the woman who knows exactly what she’s worth and finally create a life that feels as good as it looks.
She works with women who’ve read Think and Grow Rich, keep booking Bali retreats, or affirm “I am abundant” in the mirror, but are still stuck between knowing information and making actual change.
Through her signature GLOW Method, Angie combines money story rewriting, identity work, practical money strategy, and real-time action to help women stop playing small, use their voice with confidence, and become the kind of woman who naturally attracts more money, opportunities, visibility, and fulfillment.
She is the author of Running in Slippers, a raw and vulnerable memoir about finding resilience after emotional rock bottom.
Angie has moved from Chicago to Hawaii on her own, jumped out of a helicopter and into the ocean Navy SEAL-style, bungee jumped, skydived, and cliff jumped, yet is still terrified about allowing herself to be seen.
