Hello my caring friend,
Welcome…
I hope you’re feeling cherished and LOVED today. I hope you know how rare and amazing you are. I hope you know you’re seen and valued and magical.
I know it’s not always easy to remember, that it doesn’t always feel obvious or even important. And yet it matters so much.
Self-awareness matters. And that awareness must include how precious you are.
Not the easiest truth to embody, and yet one of the most transformative ones!
Like the one I’m about to share:
I’m tired of being mad at myself.
It’s the title and the confession I want to make to myself, in front of you, today.
I was not coming to the flower shop cafe—yes, that’s a thing and I get to write surrounded by the most beautiful flowers and that makes it all even more magical—to write about that. At all…
But something shifted when I stopped on Broadway to look at a wave of gorgeous clouds dancing in the bluest sky. Something deep deep deep within. I felt my body exhale and then I heard a shy exhausted voice murmur “I think I’m too tired today, I think I can’t do it anymore, I think I’m tired of being mad at myself. I think it might be time to accept that I did nothing wrong... I’m so tired of being mad at myself”
“I did nothing wrong.”
Those words feel like relief for most of us, but they rarely do to our unconscious. Indeed it can be quite scary for those exiled parts of us to realize that they really did not deserve what happened—because if it wasn’t your fault to begin with, how do you prevent it from happening again?
“I did nothing wrong”.
It can be so hard to believe, even when we fight with all we have to put the blame on everyone else. We only do that when we’re afraid we’re to blame, by the way. We are very compassionate and forgiving creatures when we’re not afraid that what is happening means something terrible about us. Why? Because when we’re not in fear, we come back to our true nature. And our true nature is love…
And love understands. She just does. She understands. She understands kindness and she understands unkindness. She understands that one is how love manifests from the inside out and that the other is what happens when love cannot be received or felt anymore. That’s why love is such a healing force. She doesn’t attack or defend. She simply understands.
The idea that “I did nothing wrong” can be very scary for our inner children too, because it also asks the question of whether whoever we’re facing now could be that dreaded monster that has been fueling our nightmares since we came to this planet. It means that sometimes people do hurtful things because they’re hurting, because they don’t know they can ask us to carry that hurt with them, instead of inflicting pain on us—creating more hurt for everybody without bringing relief to anyone. It means that sometimes people can do hurtful things to us even when we did nothing to trigger them, to annoy them, even if we did nothing to them. It means we don’t know why suddenly we don’t feel safe anymore. It means we have no control. And we human beings do not like it when we don’t have control. So it’s better to have done something wrong, in a way. It’s better if it’s our fault, it’s better because we can fix it… we can fix us.
“I did nothing wrong” is impossible to understand for a child who’s being punished or wounded or yelled at. It just doesn’t make any sense. When you’re a little human, you can only understand the world as a projection of what you do. This is why children feel so guilty when their parents divorce or die. It has to be because of them, because everything is. This is why children need us to explain again and again and over again why it wasn’t their fault at all. They need us to explain it to them, until they grow the capacity to understand that we are a part of this world, but not the master of it, and yet still a masterful co-creator.
It’s such a hard concept to grasp for an adult… How could a tiny person even start?
However, in most cases of abusive behaviors, the so-called perpetrator is completely losing touch with who they truly are in that moment. No human connected to their truth would ever hurt a fly, but we get lost on our way… shaken by the lies the ego has been telling anyone who would listen since the beginning of time.
We get lost when we don’t know how to recognize the beacons of light surrounding us, those lighthouses meant to guide our soul and the Earth back into love. We get lost when we don’t know how to receive our heart’s wisdom. We get lost often in this realm, and that’s part of the reason we’re here: to get lost, and then to get found… by our own self, back into wholeness, into the truth that breathes us, the truth that made us who we are—a unique drop of goodness in the ocean of oneness that unites us all.
We get lost and we misbehave, and we hurt those who need us most—including children. And while we’re unconsciously hurting them, we’re not able to help them understand that it’s not about them! And that’s the greatest tragedy of all. Because then both the child and the adult get stuck in a prison of shame that they cannot escape. How could they when the only key that would get them out is love, and when our ability to love is the first thing that gets frozen when a storm of shame rages inside of us…
“I did nothing wrong.”
We need to hear that often though. Even when we did something we’re not proud of. Yes, even then. Because we did nothing “wrong”, we just did something misguided; and now we get to apologize or to try again or to learn from our mistake.
That’s all a mistake is! A missed take on the situation. A misstep on our path of realignment. A misguided interpretation, a misled choice, a misinformed decision, a misfortunate reaction. We were not trying to cause harm, we were trying to escape a feeling or a thought; we were not thinking straight and that’s all the reason we need to explain misalignment.
“I did nothing wrong”.
Can you experiment saying it out loud with me, once or twice? Can you let yourself feel how your body receives these words and what happens around and in your heart?
I know I suddenly breathe more deeply, even if I don’t fully believe the words. I feel something buzzing in my chest, a loving warmth dancing alongside my chest’s drummer. I feel my shoulders relax and my back lengthen. I feel my jaw unclench and my eyes soften. I did nothing wrong… I’m not the bad guy. I’m not an enemy… I don’t deserve to be treated badly. I don’t need to be mad at myself anymore. That’s for sure a new way to see the world. I’m suddenly ready to release self-blame as an antidote to my darkness and to realize that self-blame is actually the only dark cloud remaining on the horizon. I feel one sunbeam, and then another, dance on my cheek and on my heart, and welcome the light of self-love, that old friend that lives at the center of who we are.
“I did nothing wrong”.
What if that was true? What if I truly never deserved the abuse, the neglect, the bruises or the lies? What if it was a big misunderstanding where an adult got very scared, a child terrified and a nightmare was born, not because someone did something wrong but because everyone forgot that everyone is good inside?
What would it change? How would I talk to myself then? How would I treat my body, how would I eat, how would I sleep, how would I… love?
Those are such importants questions to ask ourselves… Every day, every morning, every evening, before every turn, after every conversation. It’s such a crucial point to consider because it can make or break us. It rekindles our self-trust or pervades it at its core. It allows us to prioritize our self-care and our need for self-creation, or it prevents us from tending to our most basic needs and our most precious aspirations.
Because we don’t stop at “I did something wrong” usually, we make it mean that we ARE something wrong. Which opens the door to one of the most dangerous diseases of this century, self-loathing. We make it mean that we don’t deserve forgiveness, friendliness, joy or a second chance. We make it mean we’re doomed and that we’ll spend our entire life compensating for how broken we are and how unworthy of [insert everything good that exists] we are.
We make it mean we need to be punished, monitored, managed, imprisoned; we make it mean we need to be taught a lesson. We get mad at ourselves, and that’s a dangerous endeavor…. Because we tend to be very vicious when we’re mad at ourselves and to treat ourselves in a way we would never consider treating a murderous dictator. Or at least I do. At least a lot of the people I see in coaching do. At least a lot of artists confess through cathartic beauty that they do. At least most human beings do! And maybe you’re one of those human beings who doesn’t ever realize how cruel and cold and sadistically you talk to you.
So, today my inner critic had a small awakening, while I was listening to the song of New York and walking with the encouragement of the October wind in my back. She suddenly wondered if it was all worth it and serving any purpose. She reconsidered her need to constantly belittle me, because she suddenly questioned if it serves anyone. She realized I only offer her kindness and understanding in return; she realized I am her greatest source of love.
She realized no child deserves anything but hugs, sweet kisses, unwavering support and unconditional love. She decided to pause her relentless attacks for a few breaths, and to reassess if she’s still protecting me from anything or anyone. And even more importantly, she realized how exhausting it is to both defend and attack. So she made the little confession that inspired this entire post. “I’m tired of being mad at myself, I don’t want to do it anymore, I want to be on my own side, I want to reevaluate the situation and to rewrite the entire story with the guidance of love.”
And that’s my invitation to you now.
To sit for a few minutes with your inner critic and ask them if they want to take a little break with you, under the tree that grew from all your courage and good intentions. Ask them if they are willing to envision another way to live, to breathe, to talk and to relate to the world… Ask them if they’re willing to sit with you and that most important question: “YOU DID NOTHING WRONG: What if it really was true?”
Care.Check:
No matter what came up from you reading these words, take a moment to journal about it.
The feelings, the images, the stories, the people. The guilt, the shame, the relief, the humming of love. The behaviors that would change if you were indeed cleared of all the charges that weigh on your shoulders.
All that you would allow yourself to be, to do, to want, to become. How some of your relationships would change, end, grow, deepen, expand, transform?
How your inner world would feel and be redesigned…
Write it all down, and every time you feel like you’ve reached the bottom of this precious inquiry: ask yourself again “what if I did nothing wrong?” until it becomes a vibrant, awakening, undeniable FACT. Until it is not a question anymore.
Because you did nothing wrong.
With kindness, love and light–because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo