When the Measuring Ends

An open accounting ledger and balance scale sit on a wooden table beside a closed journal, with an open doorway leading into a sunlit garden, reflecting the essay’s movement beyond measuring worth through failure and success.

What Freya taught me about failure, success, and worth

Sometimes a mistake is more than a mistake. Something doesn’t work. I fail at something I desperately want to succeed at. I don’t meet a goal or life doesn’t go as planned. And suddenly, it isn’t only about what happened. It feels like what happened says something about me.

I’ve spent much of my life doubting my value, questioning even if I deserved to live. In my darkest moments, I believed I was a waste of resources. I wasn’t producing enough, making enough money, or doing any of the things society expected me to do to prove my value. Even after I started dancing with the Goddess, this belief of unworthiness waited in the wings. Any time I experienced a failure or made a mistake, it stomped on stage, shouting, “See, you’re unworthy and worthless.”

It’s only been in the past few years—after my sixth decade—that I’ve come to understand my worth comes from within, not from what I do.

A partly open wooden door leads from a shadowed stone passage into a sunlit garden, while precise lines carved across the floor suggest the rules and conditions once tied to being worthy.

Worthiness and Religious Conditioning

I grew up in a patriarchal religion. One of the first lessons I learned was that I had to prove my worth, value, and obedience for god to love me. The Mormon Church taught me that I came to Earth in a physical body to prove I was worthy enough to return to heaven and live with god. He would punish me for any mistakes I made or if I didn’t follow the rules exactly as laid out.

This concept of proving my worth and striving to meet other’s standards and expectations extended well beyond Sunday services. I found it everywhere. Society judged my looks, my body size, my intelligence, my dreams—just about everything about me, and I always came up short. I was never enough. I wasn’t pretty enough, thin enough, too smart, and had too many unsanctioned dreams. Because of it, I was unworthy of love and happiness.

I’ve held the innate knowing for as long as I can remember that our souls, our Inner Beings, chose to incarnate into this world in physical form. We made that choice knowing life would provide us with experiences where we could learn, grow, and expand our self-knowledge. Making mistakes, taking missteps, and having errors of judgment are part of that experience. However, the way I was taught, these mistakes—these sins—damned me and made me unworthy.

Yet many times, I learn as much from my failures as I do from my successes. I’ve discovered that I learn first by finding out how NOT to do something and from making mistakes. I can often express what I don’t want or what isn’t right for me much easier than what I do. It isn’t until I’m clear on what isn’t right or isn’t working that I discover what I can do differently or what works for me.

Papers representing plans and attempts hang beside an antique mirror that reflects them, while one has fallen to the floor, symbolizing how failures can become reflections of personal worth

When Failure Measures Self-Worth

Even after I left the Church, I still felt driven to prove my worth and value. I dove into the world of self-help and transformation, trying to fix myself and change what was wrong with me. I worked to improve myself, be a better version of myself, and become my full potential.

No matter how much I changed and transformed, the belief that I was unworthy remained. It hid beneath the surface until something happened that I could use as proof of just how unworthy I still was. Often this occurred when a business idea failed, I didn’t meet a goal, or life just didn’t go as planned.

Sunlight enters through an opened arched window and illuminates a worn chair, books, journal, and chipped cup, representing how relationship with the Goddess helped reveal worth already present rather than something that needed to be earned.

Finding Worth with the Goddess

When I started dancing with the Goddess, my goal for attuning to Her energy and frequency was to “fix” myself and prove myself worthy. Then, the longer I danced with Her, I began to understand that the Goddess expects us to stumble and fall. She also expects us to succeed and soar. The Goddess doesn’t judge us for being human and making mistakes. Nor does she reward us for our successes.

My experiences, good and bad, shape me, help me grow, and help me know myself better. They’ve allowed me to see who I am and what I want. They’re an integral part of me.

With that understanding, I no longer danced with the Goddess to be better or improve myself, but to uncover the treasures already within me. I learned to see myself and my worth differently. One of the places I could see this most clearly was in the work I had allowed myself—or hadn’t allowed myself—to do.

A balance scale holds an accounting ledger, papers, and coins on one side and a handwritten manuscript and pen on the other, reflecting the tension between measurable success and work that calls to the heart without making either a measure of worth.

Worth, Work, and Success

Even though writing, especially writing stories, has called to my heart since I was little, I didn’t accept the calling. Every time I expressed this desire, my parents told me that it wasn’t a “good” job and I couldn’t make a living from it. I often heard the term “starving artist,” and I bought into the belief that only a select few ever became successful authors—and I wouldn’t be one of them.

Instead, I went into accounting and tried to measure up by putting in long hours and overachieving. Even when I became the Chief Financial Officer for an international company, I couldn’t meet their standards to be paid the same as my male counterparts. While I was good at accounting, and it provided me with a living, I was never happy doing that work. It didn’t feed my soul or make my heart sing with joy.

After leaving accounting, I tried writing stories and completed my first series, Legends of Lairheim. But I still held the belief that writing stories wasn’t valuable or good enough work—and I wasn’t worthy to be an author. My marketing efforts didn’t work, and my dreams shattered.

I’d failed at the one thing I dearly wanted to succeed in.

Even so, I couldn’t return to the soul-sucking job of accounting. I tried creating several different businesses related to independent, or indie, publishing: formatting, business coaching, and book coaching. I even tried spiritual coaching. All of them failed—not from lack of trying! They didn’t light me up, nor were they right for me.

Goddess Freya holds out an antique mirror reflecting sunlight and the garden rather than a person, embodying the surety she reflected back until intrinsic worth could be recognized without judgment or proof.

Freya and Intrinsic Worth

As I worked with the Norse Goddess Freya, I began to see those perceived failures differently. They were also life lessons. They helped me uncover my truth and gain clarity about what was right for me.

Freya knows who she is and embodies her worth. In my dance with Her, She held the mirror for me, reflecting that surety until I could finally accept my intrinsic worth. She inspired me to follow my desires and dreams, and to do what was right for me—society’s expectations be damned.

As I began doing what was right for me, I started living more self-fully—making choices from my own knowing and worthiness rather than from other people’s expectations. Finally, I embraced my calling as a writer, not just writing about the Goddess and Goddess Spirituality but also my fantasy stories.

An open manuscript, crossed-out and completed pages, books, a blank journal, and ordinary gathered objects share a sunlit writing table, representing a life in which experiences can matter without determining personal worth.

Beyond Failure and Success

Working with Freya helped me understand that my value comes from who I am, not from what I do. With that understanding, I could look at my experiences from another perspective. My mistakes and failures didn’t diminish my value. At the same time, my successes didn’t increase my value.

I learned from dancing with Freya to value myself enough to do the things I want to do and live the life I want as an author—even if it’s contrary to society’s or my family’s expectations. I can make self-full decisions based on what’s right for me rather than whether those choices prove my worth.

It’s taken me years, but I no longer feel like I need to prove I’m worthy of success, of prosperity, or even of existing. My mistakes can teach me, and my failures can help me discover what isn’t right for me and what I can do differently. My successes can bring me joy and allow me to do things I deeply want to do. But none of them determines my value.

Just by being my unique self, I am valuable, worthy, and deserving of love, happiness, and all I desire.

Our mistakes, failures, and successes can carry meanings we learned long before we ever thought to question them. Sometimes those meanings become tangled with our sense of worth, the choices we make, and what we believe we have to prove. These questions invite you to spend some time with the meanings your own experiences have held—and what they may have helped you discover about yourself.

1. When something important to you doesn’t work out, what does the experience tend to mean to you beyond the disappointment itself?

2. Think of something you once considered a mistake or failure. What did the experience help you discover about what you wanted, what wasn’t right for you, or what you might do differently?

3. Have there been things you deeply wanted to do but questioned because they weren’t considered practical, valuable, successful, or worthwhile by someone else? What did you want for yourself beneath those expectations?

Cover image of Freya’s Sacred Worth, an embodied devotional self-love practice featuring the Goddess Freya on a green and gold mandala background, part of the Goddess Remembrance Guides by Tora Moon.

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Continue Exploring with Freya

If something in this essay resonated with you, Freya’s Sacred Worth offers a way to continue the exploration through relationship and devotional practice.

Through time with Freya, the Guide invites you to explore worth beyond simply knowing you are worthy. You’ll consider how you value yourself, your gifts, your desires, and your inner knowing—and whose measures you may still be using to determine what is valuable.

There isn’t one right answer or a particular place you need to arrive. The Guide offers different ways to spend time with Freya, reflect on your own experience, and discover what becomes visible for you.