Tag: mistake
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Trapped in Shame: How I Found Mental Freedom After Prison
“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown
I was in two prisons.
One physical. One mental.
The physical version was Otisville Federal Prison.
I was living so out of alignment with who I was and who I wanted to become and self-sabotaged in a colossal way, defrauding one of the largest tech companies in the world.
My mental prison, my personal hell, was the all-consuming power of shame. Hurting the one I love, disappointing my family, and letting myself down. Ignoring the voice inside that told me not to commit the fraud.
I believed with all my soul that I destroyed the most extraordinary gift life has to offer us: love.
I was trapped in my head and couldn’t see a way out or even a reason to try.
With every ounce of my being, I believed, “I am undeserving of love, happiness, forgiveness, and peace. I destroyed love and will never be worthy of it again. I deserve a lifetime of punishment.”
This was my prison. This is where I lived, falling further into darkness every day with no end in sight.
Shame is an insidious disease that lives, breathes, and grows in the darkness. Shame thrives in isolation, separation, and disconnection.
Shame wants to be alone.
Unless we do something about it, it will eat us alive from the inside out.
What do we do with something that lives in the dark? Something that craves isolation, separation, and disconnection?
We shine a light on it. We shine a light on it by speaking about it. By being open, by having the conversations we’re afraid to have.
Shame withers and dies in the face of vulnerability.
When we are vulnerable, not only do we shine a light on our shame, but we also give others permission to do the same.
When we shine a light on shame, when we are vulnerable and open up, we take the first step out of the darkness.
And we realize that we are not alone.
I couldn’t jump headfirst into vulnerability; I was too afraid. But I knew that if I allowed shame to consume me, it would never release its grip on my life.
How did I get to where I could be vulnerable, open, and share?
Here are the first three steps I took.
Accepting Reality
I spent my days in prison wishing I wasn’t in prison.
I spent my days wishing I hadn’t made the choices I made that landed me in prison.
I wished and dreamed for life to be anything other than it was. I was fighting against a past and circumstance that couldn’t be changed.
I would never have freedom from shame if I continued to fight for what couldn’t be changed. I had to do what I was so afraid to do.
I had to accept reality.
I didn’t want to. It felt like giving up; it felt passive. Fighting equals progress. But does it? What was I fighting against? As much as I wish there were, there is no such thing as a time machine Delorean.
Accepting reality isn’t giving up; it isn’t passive. It was an act of courage for me to say, “I accept that I betrayed myself and chose to commit a crime. I hit the ‘enter’ button, the single keystroke that started it all. I accept I made the choice to continue in the face of the universe screaming at me to stop. I accept that I am in prison. I accept that I hurt the woman I love, my family, my friends….”
A weight lifted off of me when I wrote that. I wasn’t trapped in the past. I felt something I thought was impossible in prison: freedom.
Self-Trust
I lost trust in myself. How could I possibly trust myself when I am the one who did this to himself?
There is an emptiness that is all-consuming when you don’t trust yourself.
It’s a horrible feeling.
One day, scrolling through Twitter, my friend posted, “Surest path to self-confidence I know: making and keeping commitments to ourselves.”
That struck a chord. My friend walks the walk; this wasn’t just lip service.
From that one tweet, I committed to facing my biggest fear: public speaking. It took five years, but I eventually delivered a TEDx.
The TEDx was incredible, no doubt, but there was so much more than that. It created a way of life for me.
When you make and keep commitments, you change your inner narrative to one that’s empowering.
You change your story to being a person who TAKES ACTION.
You build trust because you kept your word to yourself. When we trust ourselves, we have confidence in ourselves.
When we have confidence in ourselves, we believe in ourselves. We trust ourselves.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is hard. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done as I’ve rebuilt and reinvented my life.
I had to forgive myself for the choices that resulted in my arrest by the FBI and my sentence to two years in federal prison and cost me everything: my marriage, my homes, my cars, my sense of self-worth, and my identity.
I had to forgive myself for planning on killing myself.
I didn’t think I was worthy of forgiveness. Who was I to let myself off the hook with all the damage I had caused?
I had to take the first two steps of acccepting reality and cultivating self-trust.
When I took those first two steps, I understood that forgiving ourselves is one of the biggest acts of love and compassion we can do for ourselves.
When we forgive ourselves, we demonstrate that we are worthy of love and compassion.
Forgiveness cultivates our self-trust as well.
Forgiveness liberates you from a past that cannot be changed. You learn to let go of that baggage weighing you down.
There’s great freedom when we let go.
From these three steps, I reached a place where I could be vulnerable and, in turn, walk out of the prison of shame.
When we own our story, we own our life. When our story owns us, it owns our life.
Huge difference.
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What If You Were Suddenly Forgiven?
“Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” ~Marianne Williamson
Twenty-seven years ago I made a terrible mistake that led to losing the friendship of someone important to me. I was twelve and I very vividly remember that I was at her front door, asking for her forgiveness and she was telling me she couldn’t do this.
Friendship is one of those areas of my life that I have always felt I need to work on. I used to believe I had to do work in this area because I was uprooted every six months to three years in my childhood. I believed that my trust in friendships was shaky because my history suggested to me that eventually one of us would leave.
And then the unimaginable happened.
I was faced with the truth, my unforgivable moment. The girl, who is now a woman, showed up at an impromptu reunion and I sat across from the mistake I had made twenty-seven years ago.
She and I were best friends. We spent the night at each other’s houses and shaved our legs for the first time together. She taught me all the big vocabulary words, I taught her all the swear words. We were inseparable.
And then her mom got sick. Shortly thereafter, she died.
I grew up in an unconventional family where my parents were married at nineteen and had kids by twenty-one. They were boundless young adults with children and stalwart opinions, lacking in education. My dad’s dad had also died when he was young, and instead of creating empathy and compassion in him, my dad was left with the notion that when you die, you’re just dead—get over it.
My friend’s mom was the first person most of us kids actually knew to have died. I felt the tears and remember the sadness, but like any twelve-year-old, I was ready for our friendship to resume as normal seconds after her mom passed away. Naturally, that was not the case. Thus occurred the twelve-year-old “fight” over the conditions of our friendship.
My parents told me she was just using her mom’s death as a reason to be difficult and that she just needed to get over it. I remember my mom hissing those heartless words at my best friend. And I remember echoing a similar sentiment myself, without conviction or the wisdom of experience, thus destroying our friendship forever.
Over the years after that, I would try to regain access to her, to our friendship, with apologies and attempts at conversation. All efforts were met with a firm “No,” or “I’m not ready.” The words not only marred and destroyed our friendship but rippled through all of our mutual friends, ending many other friendships for me. I was devastated, alone, and unforgiven. I was twelve.
Now imagine you are forgiven twenty-seven years later.
As I was meditating this morning, I was brought to tears thinking of my daughter and how careful I have been to express and teach empathy to her, how I have given her the pieces that I was lacking.
And as I meditated, I realized this is where my fear in friendship lives. This is where it all stemmed from. The moving and uprooting didn’t help my trust levels. But imagine you were never forgiven for a mistake you didn’t understand, for words that weren’t yours, in a time of grief you didn’t understand. Imagine you were left behind by all you had loved and trusted because you regurgitated your parents’ problematic view of grief and death to your friend.
Never in a million years would I ever do anything to intentionally hurt anyone, let alone my best friend. And knowing what I know today, I cannot even fathom how badly she hurt from the loss of her mother. Her mom! The one person who is meant to care for us and help us with our periods, talk to us about dating, and hold us when we cry. Her mom died. And I said the unthinkable. The unforgivable.
Last week I woke up thinking, “What if the unforgivable thing that has played a role in all of my relationships was forgiven? What if I was forgiven? How does that fit in? How does it transform itself in my life, in my body?”
I would breathe in a room of strangers, trust a little deeper in the friendships I currently host. I would be able to unwrap and unbutton my tightly wound guard that has protected me all these years. I could stop worrying about whether or not people would like me if they knew who I really was, and instead trust that I am worthy of love and simply good enough… finally.
We all have an un-forgiveness story buried deep inside. We don’t have to wait years for the relief of receiving someone else’s forgiveness, if it ever comes at all. We can choose to forgive ourselves now, whether they do or not, and free ourselves from the weight of our shame and self-judgment. Take these three steps to do just that:
1. Think about the day your un-forgiveness was born. Relax and allow yourself to repeat it one last time.
Close and eyes and remember: What was the context in which the story happened? Who was with you? What have you done? What happened after that?
2. Now imagine if you forgave yourself, and if there is another person(s) in the party, feel their forgiveness as well.
How would that feel in your body? How would that transform the beliefs you formed about friendships, partnerships, business, and life? What would you do differently if you knew you were forgiven and released the shame of your experience?
3. Give yourself and the others involved forgiveness, as we all do our best with the information and understanding we have based on our upbringing and out time in the world.
And as Maya Angelou wrote, once we know better, we can do better. We always have the opportunity to get wiser. Forgiveness is compassion and wisdom.
Forgiveness in ourselves and others is one of life’s great lessons. We are often held hostage by our inability to forgive and therefore so is our potential to achieve our life’s purpose.
A big powerful thank you to my friend who forgave me after twenty-seven years. I am honored and working to spread the love you showed me.
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Made a Big Mistake? What to Do Instead of Beating Yourself Up
“Note to self: Beating yourself up for your flaws and mistakes won’t make you perfect, and you don’t have to be. Learn, forgive yourself, and remember: We all struggle; it’s just part of being human.” ~Lori Deschene
When I was in twelfth grade I took a World Issues class and learned about colonization, child soldiers, and how some children, by no fault of their own, had a much more challenging life than I’d had. After that, I wanted to help but wasn’t sure how.
Then, at age twenty-three, I was hired at a non-profit organization where I had the opportunity to work with teenage girls in prison. Finally, I had a real opportunity to help and I wanted to be perfect.
It was my dream job. I was excited. But then I made a big mistake.
I walked into the prison and filled out the visitor’s sign in sheet. I waited until Sharon, the classroom teacher, came to meet me.
She was rushing, as she often was, trying to accommodate me and keep teaching her class.
“A couple of girls tried to knock themselves off last night, including Kate,” she said quickly, “so they’re not in class today. But it’s fine to go ahead with the interview.”
“Attempted suicide?” I stammered.
“Yeah,” said Sharon, “They’re just trying to get attention. Don’t worry too much about it.”
I cringed. My breath got short and my stomach tightened. I couldn’t imagine that it was only about getting attention, and something felt off about going ahead with the interview.
Before I really had time to process what had happened Sharon opened a door with her key card and held it open. “Kate’s in here with one of the staff, go ahead. She’s fine,” she said. I stepped through. She let go of the door and walked off quickly to get back to her class.
I was interviewing Kate that day for a blog post. My organization wanted to profile her to show the breadth of work that we do. I had a list of questions I’d prepared and a recording device.
I’d been working with her class for a couple of months. I was running a workshop on advocacy, so I went in once a week. I’d brought in guest speakers to inspire the girls, and now they were working on their own advocacy project—telling their stories through a short film.
I liked Kate. She wasn’t afraid to share her opinion and was a bit of a class clown. She was seventeen and had had a difficult life but was tough and resilient. I could tell her sense of humor helped all the girls through the hard days.
She seemed fine. We joked around and then got into my prepared questions. I turned on the voice recorder and started asking her about her childhood and her life.
Half an hour passed quickly and then I packed up my voice recorder and said goodbye. A staff member took me through a series of magnetic lock doors and I left.
When I got back to my office there was a message from the manager of the prison on my voicemail. She’d heard I’d asked Kate how she ended up in prison. Kate hadn’t answered, but since youth in Canada have special privacy rights when they’re involved with the law, the manager was very upset.
She was also upset that that I’d interviewed Kate when she was in a vulnerable state and said that never should have happened.
I felt terrible. My face got hot and breath shallow. I’d wanted so desperately to help and now I felt like I was making things worse.
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked, “Why didn’t I follow my instincts and postpone the interview? Am I really making things better or am I just making things worse?”
These thoughts ran through my head for weeks following the event and I began to seriously question if I could do this job.
And I was scared of messing up again, so I became a perfectionist with everything I did. I would spend weeks editing a single email to make sure there wasn’t something inappropriate in it.
And eventually it got to be too much. It was my dream job but it was too hard. The girls’ stories were too sad. I couldn’t do as good of a job as I wanted to.
I could barely get up in the mornings. I was too tired, too depressed. I was burning out.
So I quit.
I knew I couldn’t look for another job; I’d just be looking for something similar. I’d landed my dream job but couldn’t do it. I needed to press the reset button on my life.
So I moved to a yoga and retreat center in the Canadian mountains and spent two years learning to meditate, learning what was within my control, how I could help, and what was not my responsibility.
And eventually, I learned how to forgive myself for the mistake I made with that young woman. I realized that my intentions were good, that I hadn’t meant to hurt her, and that I’d made a mistake but it wasn’t quite as big as I’d thought.
And after two years of studying yoga, I went back to the same job. Working with youth with similar stories, I learned to do it better. I still made mistakes but was better at forgiving myself. And I could see that the positive impact I was making outweighed these errors.
If you’ve made a big mistake (or even a small mistake!) you can forgive yourself too.
Here’s how:
1. Tell someone you trust.
The best thing I did after making the mistake with Kate was call my boyfriend. He listened to the situation and then said, “Bryn, honestly, if I was in a rough place and had attempted suicide, you’re exactly who I would want to talk to the morning after. I’m sure your kindness helped.”
My boyfriend wasn’t the type to give compliments, so I believed him and it started the process of forgiving myself.
It might be hard to be vulnerable and share your mistake, especially if you’re feeling deeply ashamed and afraid of being judged. But odds are someone who loves you will view your mistake from a different perspective and help you see the positive intention behind the misguided action.
2. Be radically kind.
If you’re anything like me, your instinct after you make a big mistake will be to punish yourself for it. You’ll think, “I have to work harder to make up for it.” You might tell yourself, “I don’t deserve to take a bath or go for a walk in the woods.”
So try your very best to be radically kind to yourself. Take that bath. Go to bed early and get enough sleep. Get outside or take a yoga class.
We’re more prone to make mistakes when we’re tired or stressed. So if you take care of yourself, you’re less likely to make future mistakes.
3. Realize you were doing the best you could with the resources you had.
Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.”
You probably were doing the best you could when you made the mistake. Maybe you were overwhelmed or exhausted which both make errors more likely.
And now that you’ve made the mistake, you can learn from it and ensure you don’t make it again.
4. See that beating yourself up isn’t helping anyone.
Beating yourself up doesn’t take back the mistake and probably is just making you tired and maybe even depressed.
According to shame researcher Dr. Brene Brown, when you tell yourself, “I am a mistake” it sends you into a shame cycle that is correlated with depression, addiction, eating disorders.
The good news is when you tell yourself, “I made a mistake” you can learn from it and this is correlated negatively with depression, addiction, eating disorders.
I learned a lot from my mistake. I blamed myself for hurting Kate when she was already having a terrible day. And, yes, if I could go back I would do things differently. But I eventually realized my mistake wasn’t as big as it originally seemed and my intentions were good, so I could forgive myself.
I also realized it wasn’t just my mistake I felt bad about; it was also that Kate and the other girls had such difficult lives. I needed to learn that I can’t save people, and that’s okay. I can still make a positive impact, no matter how small, even if I’m not perfect.
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If you’ve made a big mistake, I get it. It can be very difficult to overcome. But taking one step at a time, you can learn to forgive yourself and ultimately this will free up your energy to do more good in the world.
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When a Wrong Can’t Be Righted: How to Deal With Regret
“Regret can be your worst enemy or your best friend. You get to decide which.” ~Martha Beck
I was lucky enough to grow up with a pretty great mom.
She put herself through nursing school as a single parent, still made it to every field trip and dance recital, and somehow always made my brother and me feel like the best thing since sliced bread (even when we were acting like moldy and ungrateful fruitcakes).
She knew our deepest secrets, our friends, and who we were capable of being—even when we didn’t know ourselves. As I grew older my mom and I had a journal that we would pass back and forth. In it we shared our thoughts and feelings, stories, and fears, as if we didn’t live in the same house and across the hall from each other.
She was my best friend and my “person,” my closest confidante and biggest supporter—but there was, of course, an inevitable down side.
Like anyone who doesn’t know what they have, I often took her for granted.
With age came independence, “worldliness,” and too-cool-for-school-ness. My relationship with my mother took a back seat to friends, romance, and my early-twenties aspirations of moving to LA and becoming rich and famous. (In reality I became an assistant to someone rich and famous, which was exactly close enough to send my self-esteem into a tailspin.)
On trips home I was mostly concerned with seeing friends and popping into old hangouts; she’d be there when I got home, I figured, and she understood… right?
I was young and gregarious, and had more important things to do than spend quality time with my mother. Even after moving back to town I didn’t see her much; the years had seen her fall into a deep depression, and it was one that vividly echoed a growing disappointment in my own life—her pain seemed to only compound mine.
As I began to work on getting my own life back on track, I relegated time with my mother to every other Sunday and holidays, holding her (and our relationship) at arm’s length. What seemed at the time to be self-care and boundaries was also a mixture of avoidance and burden—but I didn’t truly know this until a Tuesday afternoon one day in November.
She’d called me the night before and I’d ignored it; she was lonely and called me a lot, and I’d decided that I couldn’t always stop what I was doing to answer. But the next day I got a call at work from my brother, telling me to come home at once. When I got there I found that she’d died in her sleep the night before.
I checked the voicemail that she’d left me. In it she’d asked me to come over and see a movie with her.
The guilt caved me in.
The following weeks and months were a blur. I was beside myself with grief, regret, and the illogical thinking that can come with loss: Maybe if I’d come over that night she wouldn’t have died. Maybe if I’d been around more, called more, or been a better daughter, maybe that would have changed things.
I recounted my failings and knew there had been many—there usually are, once death takes away the possible tomorrows that you thought you had. Losing her was one thing, but the cloud of regret that hung over my head was entirely different and all encompassing.
It lasted for quite a while.
I didn’t wake up one day and realize that I wasn’t to blame for her death, although I knew how illogical that thought was to others. I also never woke up and felt that the way I acted toward her was entirely right; though fallible and human, I’d consciously been an absentee daughter for quite a while.
But, what did this guilt mean for the rest of my life? Did it mean making myself sick with the never ending replay of all I’d done wrong, or constantly reliving all of the choices I wish I hadn’t made?
As time went on it became apparent that I could literally spend the rest of my life punishing myself. It felt almost fair to carry the weight of regret everywhere that I went. After some time, however, I began to wonder who I was carrying it for.
Was the regret for her, homage to my mother that I could never really repay? Was it for myself, a masochistic comfort that I felt in never truly forgiving my past?
As I contemplated these ideas in the periphery of my mind, I began to take notice of how others repair the damage stemming from guilt and regret.
In recovery communities, when you wrong someone (and realize it) you seek to make it right. You revisit the ill behavior of your past, and (unless it’s going to harm another) you approach the person and ask how to repair things. It may be that financial amends are necessary, it might be taking a restorative action, or it may be that you’re asked to simply leave those you’ve hurt alone—but an effort is made to right the wrong.
And if a wrong can’t possibly be righted (because of death, for example) you make something that’s called a “living amends.”
Another way to look at this is “paying it forward.” Maybe the person that you harmed is gone, but if they were still here, what would you do to make it right? Is there something that you can do for someone else, or another cause, or in memoriam of the person toward whom you committed the harm? Are there things about the way you live that you can change—things you would have implemented with said person, if you’d had the chance?
The idea of a “living amends” intrigued me. Although I knew it couldn’t actually change my past actions, it could definitely change the way that I felt about the future. And anything was better than sitting under a lead blanket of guilt every time I stopped moving long enough to think.
I realized that a huge regret I felt with my mom was the complete disregard I’d had for her time. I came to visit when I felt like it, left when it was good for me, and flaked if I couldn’t “handle” her that day.
I knew that something I could do moving forward would be to show up more consistently in other relationships: make commitments and keep them, respect the time of loved ones, and show with my actions how I felt in my heart.
I also realized that I don’t want to be the kind of person who avoids another’s pain just because it’s difficult for me to bear. Depression is a heavy load to carry, and sitting with a loved one while they’re hurting can be uncomfortable—but sometimes it’s in simply witnessing another’s pain that you can help lighten it.
Boundaries are important, and some of those I drew were necessary, but some were just convenient. I now try to show up even if that’s all I can do, because I know how it feels when another does that for me.
I began to honor her in small ways financially when I could: donating to animal welfare causes that she’d loved, reaching out to my estranged brother, and becoming politically active in ways that I’d never really considered before—all things that would have made her proud.
The tears still came and the past remained unchanged, but as I lived my way to the person she knew I could be, I felt the clouds begin to part and the edges of my grief soften.
As I forged this path of “living amends” I found that it applied to other aspects of my past as well—unchangeable missteps that had kept me wrapped in a blanket of regret began to unfurl into opportunities.
Rather than filling journals with the saga of self-flagellation (which is as ugly as it sounds) I began to ask, “Where can I make this right?” If a wrong (or a relationship) couldn’t be tangibly “righted” there were always other ways that I could live my way toward an amends.
I now look at it as actively applying the lessons that mistakes have taught me—searching for how to make my future actions match the hard-won realizations about who I want to be.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not Mother Teresa, and I don’t wake up each day guided by a strictly altruistic force that leads to a perfect and pious life. (Although that would be nice, I’m still pretty human and a work in progress.)
What I have found, however, is a path of self-forgiveness: ideas, actions, and direction for the moments when I feel myself living in the cave of “if only” and regret.
Although that cave is a familiar place to be, there’s far too much life to be lived in the world outside of it.
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What I Learned from Loving the “Wrong Person” and Why I Don’t Regret It
“Some people come into your life for a reason, some a season, and some a lifetime. However long it was, be thankful for the gifts you received from them.” ~Unknown
When I first met him, we instantly clicked. We became fast friends aided by the fact that I was dealing with my father’s death and he was by my side whenever I needed someone. He was empathetic, easy to talk to, and very open. I related to him immediately.
Early on, it became clear to me that while we were friends, we would not make a good romantic pair. We had extremely opposing political views and philosophies on life, as well as different communication styles.
For example, in the beginning we would get in arguments about religion. I consider myself spiritual, but I am not very religious. He would constantly try to get me to have religious conversations with him. From my point of view, it felt as if he was trying to push his beliefs on me. It was exhausting. I didn’t feel respected or heard in my spiritual journey.
I also felt like he was a different person, depending on what group he was with, which made me uneasy. I try to be authentically me wherever I am, and I love who I am. As he shifted personalities, it was very confusing to me. It made me wonder, “Who are you really?”
My friends shook their heads, telling me he wasn’t good for me. “Angela, he is too judgmental,” they’d say. “I just feel like there is something very off about him; he makes me nervous.”
As I got to know him better I suspected that one reason for his behavior was that he had previously been involved in an extremely toxic relationship. In fact, it was so dysfunctional that law enforcement got involved.
It made me ponder, “Do I really want to be with someone who attracts this kind of relationship into their life?” But I stuck by him during that time because he had been so present in my life when my father passed. I believed he deserved the same thing from me.
On the day he kissed me, things started to get fuzzy. When we were alone, things felt very relationship-y. However, when were in our regular environment, we acted like best friends. I told myself that I could balance the division, but I couldn’t.
I started to shove the multitude of reasons we shouldn’t be together under the rug, only to take them out occasionally to shame myself for wanting to be with him.
As the months passed by and our weird relationship continued, I realized I was starting to have authentic feelings for him. I was wearing rose-colored glasses and only saw the good parts of him, but I still didn’t feel right about the nature of our relationship.
One morning it finally hit me. I’d had a dream that he slapped me across the face. In the dream, I was sobbing, begging him for forgiveness as I held my hand over my black eye. I woke up crying because the dream felt so real. While in “real” life he had never physically hurt me, I realized I was feeling disrespected emotionally by him and myself. I knew I had to make a change.
I broke things off with him about a week after that. It was beyond difficult. He was mature about it and apologized for his part in the ordeal, but it was not the route I wanted to go. So many parts of me wanted to go on acting like nothing was wrong, but my heart knew that it wasn’t a path I could travel any longer.
While loving someone “who is not right for you” can be painful, you can also find some amazing lessons. Love isn’t always meant to stay forever. Sometimes it only stays for a season, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful or valuable. Here’s what I learned from my relationship.
1. Sometimes even when we know something won’t necessarily end well, we still have to go through it.
When we took our relationship to the next level, I knew in my gut that this was likely not going end in a happy way. I would never change to be the agreeable, conservatively Christian girl he wanted to date and eventually marry. My mentor told me. My sister told me. My friends told me. But, I still wanted to go through it. Why do we this?
I remember talking to a therapist a few years ago about this phenomenon. She said, “Honey, we aren’t here on this earth to rise above life. We are here to walk through the mud. The magic is in the mess.” We learn our lessons by going through intense life experiences, not by skipping through them.
2. We need to release the shame.
This goes along with lesson one. Shame is such a tricky emotion, and one I wrestle with daily. I felt so much shame for having feelings for someone I knew in my heart was not the best person for me. I would beat myself up constantly. I realized that if I wanted to move on I had to stop putting myself down. Shame was keeping me stuck.
To release the shame, I would talk to myself like I would talk to my best friend. My best friend went through a similar situation this past summer and I always told her, “Honey, I don’t know if this is going to end well and this doesn’t look healthy. However, if this is what you need to go through for your growth, I will be here to hold your hand and catch you when you fall.”
After she moved on from the situation, she told me how much this meant to her. “You were the only friend who didn’t judge me. You acknowledged my journey. It helped me move on a lot faster to have someone accept me exactly where I was.”
In this case, I needed to be my best friend. I wish that in the past, I would have metaphorically taken my own hand and told myself that I would be there for myself through the mess. I needed to do that for me.
3. Giving and receiving love are natural human needs.
I realized that part of the reason I’d chosen to be with this man was that I wanted to give and receive love. That’s a beautiful thing. I love loving people romantically. It feels great, and when it was just us, living in the present moment, it was a beautiful experience.
On the flip side, I do believe it’s important that give your love to someone who can receive it with a pure intention. I recently saw a quote by Lisa Chase Patterson, “I always say, never sleep with someone you wouldn’t want to be.” I wholeheartedly agree with Lisa, but I believe it goes deeper. Don’t give your heart romantically to someone you don’t want to be.
4. Acknowledge the dark parts in yourself and love them.
I have been involved in mindfulness studies since I was sixteen. I hold myself to a high standard and want to be an example of a mindful being, but I am still human.
There are still parts of me that seek love out of neediness and wanting to be accepted. There are parts of me that are attracted to fixing people and feeling in control. While I have worked through a lot of pain and trauma in my life, there’s also still this little girl inside of me who wants everyone’s approval. These are parts of myself that I work on daily, but I have to be patient with myself.
Lots of times we attach to beliefs about ourselves at a very young age and we have to peel them away layer by layer. It can take a long time. Patience is required. However, I think this process is what makes it beautiful. Life is not a race; it’s a journey.
While this love story will not end in a relationship status update on Facebook or a proposal, it ended with some beautiful memories and some even more extraordinary lessons. I realized I don’t regret our kisses. I don’t regret sharing my secrets with him. And I especially don’t regret loving him. Instead, I choose to be grateful for how the relationship helped me grow.
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5 Reasons to Forgive Yourself and How to Do Better Going Forward
“At the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now; we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at the very end, that absolution ourselves.” ~David Whyte
The last time I saw my mother she was smiling and laughing at nothing in particular. My mother has had dementia for almost ten years now. Each visit brings an onslaught of guilt and uncomfortable feelings. Could I have done something different to ease this for her?
For years I discounted my heritage and all my ancestors, and in doing so devalued her. How could I have been so heartless? How could I have stayed out all night and worried her to death when I was in my twenties? Why didn’t I stay with her in Boston after I married? The list goes on and on.
I can count each transgression and easily relive the selfishness of a younger version of me. I want to reach back in time and slap that younger self, admonishing her for losing out on caring for the person that loves her most.
I want to send her the warning that time is running out and she is wasting it on trivialities, ego-centric activities, and hurtful behavior. But I cannot reach back in time, and for many years I carried the burden of a wild adolescence that had no regard for the one who cared most about me.
There have been times when, on bent knee, I pleaded silently and tearfully for her forgiveness, but she would have none of it. She simply continued her incoherent storytelling with a smile and eyes that were viewing something in the distant past. The best I could do was to stay present with her in her story, allowing her to share whatever needed to arise unconditionally.
And then it happened.
During one visit I was again listening to her storytelling, laughing with her, sharing her jokes and following the winding path of her conversation when she suddenly stopped. Something in her eyes shifted. It was as if a light turned on for a moment. And then she said it, even using my name, which she had not recalled for years.
“Alicia, I’m fine. Let it go. Focus on your life and move on. I’m fine.”
And with the same suddenness she disappeared into the fog, her eyes coated with the same film that hides the chapters of her life. I burst into tears.
Grace is Found in Forgiveness
We discover grace in forgiveness. We unburden the baggage we carry with us when we are forgiven, and when we forgive. Transgressions, real or perceived, carry an energetic and negative tether that creates a network of dark knots that expands as we continue to carry these transgressions through our relationships and into our lives.
We believe that others hold the ability to release us through their forgiveness. When we surrender the power to forgiveness to someone else we lose the ability to recover our goodness and worth. In truth, we each hold the power to forgive simply because we are the ones that need to forgive ourselves.
In the moment that my mother spoke I felt a release and then an awareness that the forgiveness I attributed to her was really within me. I needed to forgive myself for my behavior and lack of awareness that created the guilt I carried with me. What my mother did was make me aware that I needed to “move on.” And to do so meant to forgive myself.
5 Reasons We Have to Forgive Ourselves
1. The other person may not forgive you.
For years, I was haunted by past transgressions that caused harm to someone else. The sting of the lies of the past and the impact on those that I cared about caused such shame in me that I became rigid about what was right and wrong. There was no one to call for forgiveness. Those relationships existed in the past and have long since moved on.
I had to forgive the teenager and the young woman who foolishly thought the world revolved around her needs.
If you look back into the past you’ll notice you may be carrying shame too. It’s time to forgive the person you were so that the person you are can keep growing.
2. If you don’t forgive yourself then how will you keep going?
You can’t make changes or move forward in your life carrying the weight of your mistakes.
Imagine putting all your past mistakes into a bag, adding to it each time you make a new one. The bag would become so heavy, the burden so great, that it would be impossible to keep going.
It’s time to put that bag down, take out each item, and forgive so you can let go of the past and move forward, having learned the lessons that will make you a better person than before.
3. You can’t forgive others if you can’t forgive yourself.
You have to learn how to forgive, starting with yourself. If you cannot offer yourself compassion and forgiveness, you will never be able to offer the same to others.
Life’s missteps are an opportunity to learn. These mistakes are useful in that they point you away from the person you do not want to be and reveal the path of growth and authenticity that you can choose for your life.
4. The shame of the past can only be transformed through forgiveness.
I confess that I intentionally caused hurt to others out of ignorance or narcissism before I realized what true connection and love were. I’ve learned that when I lash out, it is a projection of the anger or discomfort I feel toward myself. Unless I forgive myself, I will carry that anger into the world and project it onto others.
Change your anger into a call to attend to something that is hurting within you. Forgiveness is the alchemy that transforms shame into self-love.
5. To accept and value yourself you must embrace both virtues and flaws.
We human beings are flawed. We must accept that we are not perfect. We make mistakes, and sometimes we make mistakes that hurt others. However, our mistakes do not define us. They are opportunities to learn about ourselves, who we are and who we aspire to be. By acknowledging our flaws and our strengths, we can consciously choose how we live our life.
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I’ve learned to forgive myself and have adopted practices that help prevent those missteps that cause guilt, regret, and shame. These practices are integrated into my life today because yes, I still mess up.
1. Practice conscious living.
Too often we hurt others due to our sheer ignorance or lack of empathy. We are not caring for others when our lives are so full and busy that we are unable to stop and notice how someone else is feeling.
When you are present to yourself and to those around you, you are conscious of your choices and actions. Your awareness of your environment increases. You will notice the person who is feeling sad or disappointed and offer them a kind word.
So many of our regrets, the things we wish we had done or said, are due to sleepwalking through our lives. Observing yourself, learning about yourself, and choosing your thoughts and actions means you are conscious and present to your life and to others.
2. Accept what you have done without denial or justification.
It’s easy to justify our actions or to blame others for our mistakes. Take responsibility for your decisions and you empower yourself to choose wisely.
This requires that you face your transgressions and tend to that wound so that you can begin to heal. Do this with an open heart and allow self-love to flow so forgiveness may transform the pain into peace.
3. Identify what it feels like when you are angry, resentful, or sad so that those feelings do not hijack you into doing harm to others.
These strong feelings can take us over, and we are left wondering how we could’ve behaved so badly. When you become self-aware, you notice when those feelings begin to arise so you can better manage your emotions. Of course you will feel these emotions at times. This is part of our human nature. Acting on them is what causes regret and shame.
4. Practice meditation and mindful breathing.
Through mindfulness, you begin to recognize the impermanence of things so you can make healthier choices. Nothing lasts forever, whether it’s joy or sadness. Sometimes we have to endure the discomfort of the moment by breathing through it until it passes. And it always passes.
5. Forgive imperfection.
Self-compassion means you accept that some days, you are doing the best you can do at the time. It’s not perfect but it’s good enough, and that’s fine. Perfection is a heroic standard that no one meets. It sabotages your confidence and self-esteem.
How different would our world be if we forgave each other? Begin by forgiving yourself and let the waves of that forgiveness ripple out so that one day, maybe, the compassion and forgiveness you offer yourself can create more peace and tranquility in a world desperate for its own transformation.
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Don’t Let Your Bruised Ego Keep You Down When You Fall
“If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” ~Chinese Proverb
My niece is three years old. I get to video chat with her daily. During our interactions, she loves to show me, with tremendous happiness and pride, her new toys, her new dresses, and the various sounds her scooter is capable of making.
One day, a few months ago, as she was enthusiastically getting her scooter near the screen, she tripped and fell, albeit with no serious consequences. What I learned from this event has been gratifying.
After she fell, she sat there on the floor for about a second or two without knowing what to do.
She then looked up, squirmed a little, and was about to start crying (just because my sister had seen her fall), when my sister told her reassuringly, “Nothing happened, get up!”
And there the little child was, up on her happy feet again, flaunting her scooter with a big smile on her face.
I realized then that many times, we too, as adults, trip and fall. We are left dazed and shaken. We sometimes force ourselves into a haze of self-pity, dejection, and depression. It can seem worse when other people see us fall. The pain is so much greater when it comes with a bruised ego!
We start thinking we are the only ones struggling so much. We fail to understand what’s happening in our life and what to do about it. In short, we feel like losers.
One such similar incident happened with me.
I landed a job at a startup firm soon after my graduation, and it meant a lot to me. Obviously! It was my first job and I was so excited about it—about moving out on my own and getting to live the life I had been waiting for.
Then, within weeks, I realized I was at the wrong place. I initially tried to ward off my apprehensions as mere jitters. But then the frustration, stress, and pressure reduced me to a bag of sick emotions. My self-confidence took a tremendous beating, and I started crying myself to sleep every single night.
It was then that I realized something important about myself as a person: There is nothing in this world that can make me sit glued in front of a computer screen for hours, from morning to night. That just isn’t me.
I realized I wasn’t excited about the work I was doing. My value system wanted me to do something that felt more meaningful to me (like teaching, or working in an NGO, or even taking up public interest lawyering).
As I saw it then and as I see it now, we get to live just once, and I can’t spend all my time in making a living, forgetting to make a life!
I realized I wanted to follow my passions, my deepest yearnings, and the deepest desires of my soul.
In those two months, I hadn’t written a word for myself (writing is something close to my heart), I hadn’t pursued music (which I desperately wanted to do), and moreover, I hadn’t made time for reading (another passion of mine). This pushed me even deeper into the abyss.
Because of these incongruences between my personal value system and my life and work, I lost self-respect, lost trust in my professional abilities, lost faith in my own skills, and above all, lost faith in myself.
I was shattered. I knew that I had to quit that job as soon as possible. Friends and family advised me to stay for a year so that it would augur well on my CV. But my sanity was at stake. I had fallen, and terribly at that, and I had to pick myself up by hook or crook. Of course, there was a catch.
I didn’t quit the job right away because I felt even more miserable thinking about what my relatives, friends, and lecturers would think about me if I left within two months of starting.
I imagined people gossiping about me in hushed voices, and I worried about what my juniors—many of whom idolized me—would think about me.
I was worn out, until I decided to follow my heart and not my head. I had tripped and fallen, and it was time that I picked my spirits up and moved on.
It was time I told myself, “Nothing happened, get up!” And, thank goodness, at last I did.
Months after this incident, I feel stronger, more self-aware, and more humble.
I have come to strongly believe that with any difficulty—be it a break-up, rejection, or mid-life crisis—we can choose how we think about it and what we do in response.
We can choose to stop for a while, analyze the situation, and to accept it completely, without trying to reject or blame ourselves or our circumstances. And by doing this, we can be a lot more peaceful within ourselves.
It is during such challenging times that we need to awaken that voice inside us that reassuringly prompts us to accept and get up, so we don’t find ourselves sobbing even longer, just because we fell down and everyone saw.
I’ve thus realized that a happy life is not a problem-free, perfect life. Instead, a happy life is that which we aren’t afraid to face, knowing that every time it knocks us down, we can and will get back up.
Man climbing image via Shutterstock
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Getting Back Up After You Fall
“If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” ~Chinese Proverb
Last year I had emergency open heart surgery. Shortly after the procedure, two nurses entered my room and gave me terrible news: I had to walk.
That may not sound like a big deal, but open heart surgery is brutal. Simple things like being able to sit up or change position once my backside became sore were agony. Getting to the walker, a mere several steps away from my bed, was an extreme effort.
My goal was to walk around the nurse’s station, and I might as well have been told to walk to the moon.
Despite a punctured lung (a surgical accident), I concentrated on regular deep breaths and slow deliberate steps. I was so focused on these two things that the pain, while still significant, slipped away.
By the time I made it back to my bed, I wanted to cry and laugh—I had made it!
The next day was very different, as I’d been having a difficult time. I couldn’t seem to muster the strength to get out of bed; finally, out of desperation, I cried and gasped out that I couldn’t do it. One of the nurses very firmly but compassionately told me I could.
With her help, I somehow managed to stand on both feet and stagger to the walker. As I made my tour of the station, the deep breathing and deliberate walking allowed me to calm down enough to cope with the pain and the severe depression I’d been battling.
It had hurt so much to move that morning, but once I stood up and took that first step, things started to get better.
From that moment on, I knew that I had the strength to conquer this physical challenge. I walked every day, right up until I was released. By far it was the greatest and most painful thing I had ever accomplished.
The stumbles and falls we suffer in life can be very much like physical ones. Have you ever actually fallen? Aside from the embarrassment, what thoughts ran through your mind?
Did you: (more…)
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Taking Risks: 5 Things to Know Before Leaping without a Net
“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” ~Unknown
It was the perfect storm.
In 2009 my best friend got married. At 48, having never been married, I once again caught the bouquet. Two months later, my mother’s home burned to the ground. At 70 years old, she lost everything, including a pet. Three months later, her husband died.
During the process of negotiating my mom’s temporary stay at a cabin resort, I fell in love with the cabin developer. To complicate matters, I was already living with a man who I had lived with, inconsistently, for 14 years.
To summarize, in six months I watched one of my last unmarried friends get married. I saw my mother fall to pieces. I mourned my stepdad’s passing. I terminated a 14-year relationship, to be with another man. I sold my real estate business, moved from Kansas City to the Ozarks, and lost touch with my friends—and myself.
Two years later, I awoke and confessed what I formerly denied: I had just had a whopper of a midlife crisis.
Through it, I learned these 5 important lessons about happiness:
To Thine Own Self Be True
In Hamlet, Act I, Polonius shared this as his last piece of advice to his son Laertes. To be true to yourself means to not lose sight of what is essential for your happiness.
When I met the cabin developer who was there for me during a very difficult period, my love (or lust) blinded me of what made me, me.
Because I thought my marriage chariot had finally arrived, I over-compromised by moving to the country, away from the city culture I adored; by living in a depressing man cave, even though I love new and modern surroundings; and by isolating myself from my friends and simple Brenda basics, like a movie theater and a salad bar.
Friends warned me upfront that, because of these differences, I should reconsider pursuing the relationship. But I didn’t listen, until one day my inner voice me forced me to fess up. Not only was I unhappy; I was miserable.
A good friend of mine has always known who she is, what she wants, and what is a deal breaker in her relationships. She doesn’t date men with kids and, in her words, she doesn’t sleep with Republicans. She’s Aquafina clear on her criteria. To her own self she’s don’t-screw-with-me true.
We’re just plain happier when we know our needs and honor them. (more…)
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How to Grow from Mistakes and Stop Beating Yourself Up
“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” ~Unknown
The spiral staircase has always intrigued the yogi-designer in me. The visual draw, similarity to DNA, and cosmic patterns, as well as its mathematical genius, could be enough, but the structure can also mean more.
Picture yourself tripping up in work, life, or love. You’ve made a mistake, said the wrong thing, or didn’t come through with your end of the bargain.
You think, how did I let that happen? What a (fill in the blank) I am. I can’t believe I did that, again. If only I could rewind.
These aren’t the greatest feelings, it’s true. However, we live our lives in irony. Though we dislike how we feel having just tripped up, we continue to beat ourselves up way after the fact.
We cause our own suffering. Furthermore, we seem to forget that when we make mistakes, we grow. An atmosphere of growth is integral to happiness. So create happiness by seeing mistakes as true growth opportunities.
Although yoga, psychology, and conventional wisdom scream at us to live in the moment, I say we are not just the present moment.
We are very much our past in the most rich and helpful way. We can use past mistakes to yield a shiny new perspective and, in turn, create a new outcome.
If we allow them, our mistakes can fuel our awareness. In helping us decide how to act and react in a fresh and fruitful way, they can bring us closer to happiness and further away from causing our own suffering. (more…)
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Accepting Blame and Asking for Forgiveness
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” ~Kimberly Howard
As a kid I was quite often “långsur.” Långsur is a Swedish expression for being grumpy for a long time. Every time someone was mean to me, I sulked for hours, even days. This became quite tedious at times, especially since as soon as I became happy again, some new event triggered me to sulk again.
You get the picture.
I simply had such a hard time forgiving people.
It went the other way too. I found it hard to admit that something was my fault. At least out loud. Inside, I blamed myself, but I could not get the “I’m sorry” across my lips.
As I grew older, I realized no one liked Miss Grumpy and those long days of sulking had to be shortened a wee bit if I wanted to keep some friends, but to be honest, forgiving was still hard. Also, even though I was happy on the surface, many days I was still “långsur” on the inside.
Guess who suffered the most from this?
It was not until I had kids that I really got out of this extremely negative mindset.
All of a sudden, I didn’t have time to sulk. Diapers were to be changed, bottles heated; and sleep—that wonderful thing we all take for granted BK (before kids)—was to be enjoyed, or rather desperately grasped at when there was a moment.
Not only did I no longer have time to sulk, I also realized that for us parents to mentally survive, we had to be able to communicate quickly, honestly, and rationally. We had to make decisions without hesitations. We made mistakes all the time, but we survived them.
At this stage, a baby’s life depended on my behavior. It was not just me anymore.
It was at this time that I realized that you can actually get mad and stop being mad in matter of minutes, as long as you set your mind to it. It was up to me to decide how I wanted to feel inside.
And, if I did wrong toward another person, there was a liberating sensation in saying I’m sorry and moving on. No dwelling. (more…)
