Aloha,
Guilt. It’s a common feeling for everyone, and even more so when you’ve lost a dear loved one. It’s easy to review your time with him/her and second guess decisions, words, missed moments. The list goes on….And guilt can paralyze you, leaving you stuck and feeling trapped in your thoughts of having done something “wrong”. It’s hard to let go because it feels like a sort of penance to carry around the guilt.
But take a moment to sink into that guilt and what do you feel? Do you feel trapped? Do you feel bad about yourself? Maybe unable to move forward in positive ways? Can you live in a way that honors your child when you’re mired in these feelings, emotion and place?
Guilt comes from thinking you’ve done something “wrong” or feeling the “wrong” things, or being/doing “too…”. You get the idea. News flash, no one is going to do life perfectly. Life is about learning. And we make mistakes, we can’t learn without them. Learning is trial and error. You WILL make mistakes in every area of your life…including parenting. The question is what you do with them. Guilt comes from holding on to the mistake in judgment.
Here’s another way to approach guilt and really mistakes moving forward.
- Acknowledge your sense of guilt and/or mistake
- Review it and find the lesson in it
- Choose differently moving forward – make a conscious decision
- Let go, having confidence in yourself that you’ve learned a valuable lesson and trusting yourself to come from a different place in the future
Even in just the first step of acknowledging your guilt and mistakes you might be surprised how much freer you feel. Sometimes that simple (yet not easy) step is a tremendous step in releasing the stranglehold things you’ve suppressed have had on you.
Peace and aloha,
Heidi