Your worth depends on others' approval of your identity

This is a precarious way to hold yourself, and I know it, having spent my life judged by those who disapproved of my very existence. You have rented your self-worth to their approval — handed the deed to your value over to others' opinions, making your dignity a thing they grant or withhold, forever at the mercy of judgments you cannot control, especially cruel when the judges are biased against your identity; your worth was never theirs to confer. Their approval is a poor and biased measure — shaped by prejudice, ignorance, and self-interest, so why should the judgment of the prejudiced determine your value; their disapproval measures their limitation, not your worth, and you would not trust a broken scale to weigh gold. And move the deed to your own hands — ground your worth in your own knowledge of who you are, so others' opinions become weather rather than verdict, for a worth held in your own hands cannot be revoked by any disapproval. Whose approval most controls how you feel about yourself?