You Are Not On This Earth To Be A Living Apology

No more apologies. 

Not one more. 

You are not on this earth to be a living apology. 

None of us are. 

Yes. We fuck up. Every last one of us. 

And yes, there is grounding to be found in committing to the hard and holy work of trying to make it right. 

There is also deep wisdom in knowing that sometimes there isn’t a right to be made. 

Whatever it is that you’ve done. 

Whatever weight you are carrying. 

Whatever breach of your own integrity you’ve lived through. 

Here you are. Living in the guilt and self-flagellation and inward-directed recrimination. You’re telling stories about yourself where you’re painted the villian, every single time. 

So, you did a thing that you’ve named wrong, or the world has named wrong, or a loved one has named wrong or some powerful dudes who compiled a book of parables and myths thousands of years ago made wrong. 

How entirely human of you. 

Own it all. 

Stand in the truth of it. 

Make the apology you need to make to close your own open wound. 

Do what you can to stanch the flow of blood in the others. 

And then be done. 

Listen to me, now. 

Atonement was never intended to be a full-time job. 

There is nothing to be gained by carrying your own apology until it threatens to bury you under its weight. 

Warning: the people and structures in your life may not be comfortable with your sudden refusal to continue with your guilty confessional. 

Yes, it is true. 

Sometimes the one thing that others cannot handle is your refusal to apologize even one more time. 

But it is done, whatever it is. 

Because it is now a part of your bone and heart and guts and it has changed you. 

Because in some inexplicable way, you are better for it. 

Because you finally even like it there, like what it has made of you, as much as it may have broken. 

Because even if you don’t understand why, you needed it the way it was and the way it is, no matter the fallout. 

Because owning the damage caused does not mean that you must spend your life cleaning it up over and over again, in some groundhog day spiral of guilt. 

Because you can’t undo it, you can only move on from it. 

Because staying where you are is a vicious sort of quicksand, pulling you back down into a depths you’ve pulled yourself out of one too many times already. 

When you say no more apologies; not in your words, or your actions. Not in your body, or in your experience…this is when the real illumination begins. 

So, be done with your penance love. 

Be done.

Stand tall, not in the shadows of your wrongdoing, but in the full light of your inescapable truth. 

Learn to love what your living has made of you. 

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YOU SHOULD KNOW:
I swear like a sailor, I've been called a word-witch (more than once), I believe whole-heartedly in the power of your voice,  and think words are as necessary as air. I work with humans who are seeking permission to stop seeking permission and offer programs that will get living and writing on your own terms (for reals). 


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