Sit With Me Awhile

One of the quietest but most important parts of healing is learning how to forgive yourself.

Not the kind of forgiveness that pretends nothing happened.

But the kind that understands you were doing the best you could with the awareness you had at the time.

For a long time, I carried shame about parts of my past.

Decisions I made.
Reactions I had.
Ways I showed up in moments when I wish I had been stronger, calmer, or wiser.

It’s easy to look backward with the clarity you have today and judge the person you were then.

But healing asks something different of us.

It asks us to look at that version of ourselves with compassion.

Because the truth is, the person you were in those moments was navigating life with the tools you had learned up to that point.

Those tools may not have been perfect.

Some of them were shaped by childhood wounds.
Some by fear.
Some by survival patterns you didn’t yet understand.

But they were still the tools you had.

And when you didn’t know better, you couldn’t do better.

That realization doesn’t remove accountability.

Growth still requires honesty about our mistakes.

But accountability without compassion often turns into shame.

And shame keeps people stuck.

Forgiveness creates movement.

It allows you to acknowledge the past without letting it define your future.

It allows you to recognize that the person you were then was still learning.

Still searching.

Still trying to make sense of things that felt overwhelming at the time.

The woman I am becoming today is stronger because she understands the lessons that version of me had to learn.

But she also knows something important.

The past version of me wasn’t my enemy.

She was simply a woman doing her best with what she knew.

And now, instead of carrying anger toward her, I choose something different.

I thank her for surviving the parts of life that taught me how to grow.

And then I let her rest.