I Thought Achievement Made Me Worthy | Veera Bhajan

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Born without arms, Veera Bhajan learned from childhood how quickly the world can define someone by what it believes they lack. But behind her remarkable academic achievements and successful legal career was a much deeper struggle involving survival, shame, depression and the pressure to continually prove her worth.

In this deeply personal conversation, Veera explains how achievement became connected to acceptance—and why she eventually realised that much of her life had become performative.

She takes us inside her childhood in Trinidad and Tobago, being rejected from preschool, learning to write and complete everyday tasks with her feet, excelling academically and becoming nationally recognised after placing among the country’s top students.

Veera also discusses the emotional cost of living in survival mode, the public dispute surrounding her appointment to the Equal Opportunity Tribunal and how that painful experience reopened wounds of rejection that stretched back to childhood.

Today, Veera is an attorney, trauma coach, yoga instructor and motivational speaker. Through therapy, meditation and yoga, she has learned to separate her identity from her achievements, disability and past experiences—and reconnect with the person beneath them all.

This conversation explores disability, childhood trauma, depression, healing, hustle culture, education, vulnerability, identity and what it truly means to live an authentic life.

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