The Altar of Achievement

LAYING DOWN FALSE IDOLS AND PICKING UP FREEDOM

As I grew up, I built altars to achievement. Bowed down to performance. Worshipped at the altar of productivity.

I prayed to false gods. Their names were: Excellence. Winning. Recognition.

My offering was my worth, my self-esteem, my peace, my soul. All sacrificed on the altar of "making it."

I won my first award somewhere in elementary school. Not just one award, but dozens of them at a time. Every awards ceremony, when my name was called, I would walk proudly across the stage, accept my trophy or plaque or certificate, or medal, and turn to the audience and smile. I was too young to understand what felt so good about it, too young to realize how deeply winning was taking root in my soul. It gave me an identity that felt solid, growing up in a community that, even at my young age, I sensed people looked down on. Those moments on stage became my proof of worth - evidence that despite where I came from, I was somebody special. That feeling was my altar.

Now, as an adult, I find myself losing my religion. Not the faith practices tethered to my spirit, but a deeper, more insidious religion.

The religion of work. The religion of control. The worship of productivity. The liturgy of titles.

The unspoken gospel that told me to hold it all together. To climb. To conform. To be the "good girl" who achieves, ascends, and stays two steps ahead of falling apart.

That, too, is a religion. A set of rules. A way of being. And it doesn't live in churches — it lives in calendars, offices, apartments filled with stuff we don't even want anymore.

It's a doctrine of extraction, not existence. Of performance, not presence. Of bondage, not freedom.

As I decided to let go of my apartment and travel, it became clear that healing required something deeper:

The sacred act of release.

I didn't just let go of the lease. I called back everything I'd left in storage — old belongings from my previous Brooklyn apartment, untouched for years.

Memories of my life. My mother's life. Our life together.

Boxes of clothes that didn't fit. Decades-old dishes. Stacks of photos, awards, and trophies — fragments of who I'd been, who I tried to be, who I thought I was supposed to become.

What to keep? What to let go?

It was more emotional than I expected. And more exhausting. Because anytime you are seeking freedom — real freedom — You have to lighten the load before the journey can truly begin.

I opened the old storage boxes and found myself face-to-face with memory.

Stacks of school photos — me in every grade, always with chubby cheeks and bangs shaped by sponge rollers gone slightly wrong. Class pictures through eighth grade. Family photo albums filled with faces I'd never met, but somehow still recognized. Generations I carry in my blood.

I knew what to do with the photos: sort, preserve, pack. But then came the next layer — the archive of achievement.

Caps and gowns. Sashes. Certificates. Trophies. My mother had saved everything. And I mean everything. They gave out awards for breathing, and I had the receipts.

And I get it — it's important to honor your life. To hold your legacy and witness where you've been.

So, to little Lori, I say thank you because her early story was the light that led the way and helped me navigate survival and climbing. That Lori had no safety net and only one way to go, and that was up - and she did it the best way she knew how. But our light always has a shadow, and what was once a necessary survival tool transitioned into self-abandonment and fragmentation as the world extracted from me.

When a porcelain cup breaks, we can either toss it or piece it back together. When mended, the cracks are still visible, but it's still a cup. Wholeness is not about appearing crack-free - there is beauty in the cracks, even if how the cup carries water is different now. The cup has more story to write, more to tell, more to pour. So we mend and we make room for the next chapter. Cracks and all, I am making room for where I'm headed while honoring where I've been.

I chose my honor carefully.

I went through each award. I remembered what I could about the moment I won it. I dwelled in my mother's pride and celebration. I knew deeply that, unlike the rest of the world, her love for me had nothing to do with winning. My love for myself need not be attached to my doing. And I let the awards, the idols go. One by one into the trash. Hundreds of awards and plaques–released. They weren't just clutter, adding to my storage bill. They were monuments to a cult, a belief system I no longer wanted to follow.

A belief that said:

Your worth is in your winning.

Your value is in your performance.

If you fail, you'll be unloved.

If you lose, you'll fall back into misfortune — and never make it out again.

An exorcism, not of demons — but of expectations. Of systems that were never made for our wholeness.

Excellence is no longer code for perfectionism. It's not a currency used to trade my worth. It's a personal value rooted in expansion and growth, not a public measurement tool. Achievement is not something you chase; just a byproduct of becoming. Not the goal. It's what happens naturally when you live from a place of purpose and vision.

When we stop outsourcing meaning to things outside ourselves, we become intimate with the Divine that lives within us.

We become.

One belief at a time. One corner cleared. One self-reclaimed.

At the only altar that matters: FREEDOM.

Live: as becoming, not achieving.

Give: up the currency of worth-trading.

Trust: that letting go makes space for what matters.

Be: excellent as a personal value, not a public performance.

Honor: the light and shadow of your journey.