Dearest Reader,
I’m still taking inventory of wounds I’ve inflicted on others. Of words that, once said, set pain in motion or kept it going. Exhibit Z: my birthday, a backyard game of duck-duck-goose, girls in a circle. I tried a line from who-knows-where for who-knows-why. High on birthday bravado, I declared: “At least I’m not fat!”
Even then—long before knowing why—I felt the wrong in that. I felt the press of guilt on my shoulders, scanned the circle, noticed Sara. Seated cross-legged on grass, she leaned over her soft belly, trying to conceal it under her chest. She hadn’t earned “fat kid” status but was notably bigger than the rest of us, with our miniature bodies and sticks for limbs. I attempted a repair: “What? It’s not like anyone here is fat!” It was too late. It likely made things worse.
One line said without care. The sort of line that, on my own path, has changed or confirmed the course of things. That was thirty-some years ago. That was one of countless remembered and forgotten exhibits to come. I am sorry.
Also. Seeing this—naming the ways I’ve thrust a harmful inheritance onto others—is not virtue signalling. Nor is it self-flagellation, a cross to bear, some dark mark upon my soul. To choose that story—to claim guilt as me and mine—is more conceit, more infliction, more of the same. A tired trope. An alter personality of victimhood. We’re bigger than the both of them. We can do better.
For me, this means looking straight on and going straight in with as much clarity and honesty as I have for now. A clarity and honesty that will continue evolving and be ever unfinished. From this place, I take accountability. From this place, I apologize and make amends where I can and where doing so won’t cause more harm—taking care not to dredge up their wounds on my timeline just so I can breathe easy.
I acknowledge what is mine to own as a reminder of our shared inheritance, our shared brokenness, our shared humanness. As a reminder that we’re all in this together. Here in the beautiful, brutal immediate. Here peering through a narrow, human-sized lens on a Universe that stretches beyond imagination.
It’s hard to keep track of that, sometimes. Tangled in the wordy weeds of labels and stories and who’s right and who’s wrong. Making a project of outrage and projectile vomiting righteousness. Wishing away the past and insisting on I’m-fine-ness. In our quiet, secret desperation to defend the self, it’s easy to forget.
Here we are. Right here. All pretty much the same. All part of everything that ever was. And, in this, it’s okay to remember and name where we messed up. It’s okay to take accountability for what we set in motion. More than okay, it’s one of the most healing, most powerful things I know. For self. For others.
In refusing the shortcut—in going straight through and skipping the bypass—we learn to hold this and that. We learn that both can be true. The relative and the ultimate. Self and not self. My story and theirs. All present. All invited. All essential.
Yes, and. It took me a while to get there. In the getting there, I spent a long while declaring my victimhood, denying my part, defending “my truth.” I still have much work to do on all fronts.
One of the biggest clues? How triggered I get when others insist they know The Answer, refuse to take accountability, say we should “just forgive, forget, and get on with it” without owning up to anything.
None of that is okay. But also, the triggering is a tip-off. The triggering asks me to look at where I’m doing those things too. And then stop. Because make no mistake—such acts are deeply inflictive. To self. To others.
I’m not looking for guilt, which is equally self-centred (and, when vocalized, often asks the one who was wounded to take care of the one doing the wounding). I am looking for simple acknowledgement. For maybe saying, when the hour feels late: “I hear you. I am so sorry.”
But again, I didn’t get there easily myself and am still finding my own voice and footing when it comes to owning up and making amends. Part of my practice is not expecting others to meet me there. And, mostly, they do not. So, I meet them where they are. So, I just love them.
Somehow, someway, this relates to what was once much different. Somehow, someway, it stands in sharp relief to how I once thought maybe, just maybe, I could fill my God Box with bodies. How I once confused contact with connection.
TBH, I’m still working through how to make the jump. It’s a whole thing and includes an inventory of sexual partners and sexual misconduct and flings and cheating and one or two cases of flat-out prostitution. It includes an acknowledgement that my twenty-and-thirty-something self caused a world of harm. Anyway, I don’t have that for you today (and it will be reserved for paid subscribers when it’s ready).
So, for now, something more current: A glimpse of where I’m working my sobriety lately. It has to do with email and social media. Today is Day 3.
Head below for the messy, rough draft context plus my “new rules” in progress. (You’ll only be able to see that part if you’re a paid subscriber; sign up here.)
Ready? Here’s that messy first draft. A mere list, really.
I plan to refine and write more but am still at the start of things. Day 3, to be exact. Sharing here, before it’s polished and pretty, is part of the process and part of recovery.