Latest / Still Standing: Stories of Resilience, Survival & Strength / Forgiving Yourself for a Mistake Made Years Ago | Still Standing
Transcript
- You are still carrying the weight of a decision you made when you were twenty-four, even though that version of you didn’t know what you know now. Let’s put it down. I want you to think about a moment in your past. Maybe it was five years ago, maybe fifteen. It’s not a huge, cinematic disaster. It’s not something that made the news or broke the internet. It’s a quiet, private failure. A word you said that couldn’t be unsaid. A job you walked away from out of fear instead of courage. A boundary you failed to set because you wanted to be liked more than you wanted to be respected. You have held this stone in your pocket every single day since then. You carry it to work. You carry it into bed. You carry it when you laugh with your friends, and there it is, heavy and cold against your thigh. I see you. I know exactly what that feels like. Because I have carried my own stones, too. For years, I thought that if I just remembered the mistake enough times, if I replayed the scene with enough detail and enough shame, I could fix it. I thought self-flagellation was a form of repair. I thought that by hurting myself in the present, I was somehow atoning for the person I was in the past. But here is the truth that took me a long time to learn: guilt is not a tool for change. Guilt is just pain without purpose. And we deserve so much better than pain without purpose. We tend to view our past selves as separate people, but also strangely static. We look back at our younger selves and judge them with the eyes we have today. This is the cruelest trick our minds play on us. We forget that the woman who made that mistake did not have the information, the emotional regulation, or the life experience that you have right now. You are judging her with a brain that has grown, scarred, healed, and learned since that moment. It’s like blaming a child for not knowing how to tie their shoes, and then punishing yourself for not teaching them better. Take a breath with me. Feel your shoulders drop. When we forgive ourselves, we are not saying the mistake was okay. We are not erasing the consequence. We are simply acknowledging that the person who acted was doing the best she could with the tools she had at the time. That doesn’t make it hurt less. It just makes it human. It makes it understandable. And understanding is the doorway out of shame. Let’s sit in that for a second. What did that cost you? Not in terms of money or status, but in terms of your spirit. How many hours of sleep have you lost worrying about it? How many opportunities have you passed up because you felt unworthy? How many relationships have you kept at arm's length because you feared they would find out the 'real' you—the flawed, messy, error-making you? The cost of holding onto that mistake is higher than the mistake itself. The mistake was a moment. The punishment is a lifetime. And I am asking you to consider whether that trade-off is worth it. Is it worth trading your peace for the illusion of penance? I used to think I deserved to suffer. I thought that if I stopped beating myself up, I would become arrogant. I would become careless. I would repeat the error. But forgiveness isn’t arrogance. Forgiveness is clarity. It is looking at the wreckage and saying, 'I was here. I survived. And now, I can build something new.' You cannot build on top of rubble if you are busy trying to sweep it under the rug. Your body knows what your mind tries to ignore. When you dwell on that old mistake, do you feel tightness in your chest? A knot in your stomach? A shallow breath? That is your nervous system stuck in a loop of threat detection. It thinks you are still in danger. It thinks if you keep the shame alive, you can prevent the bad thing from happening again. But you are safe now. You are older. You are wiser. Your body needs permission to relax. It needs to know that the war is over. I remember a specific Tuesday in November, years ago, when I finally let go of a regret that had haunted me for a decade. I was sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea that had gone cold. I realized that I was protecting a ghost. I was guarding against a future that wouldn’t happen because I was obsessed with a past that already had. When I finally whispered, 'I forgive you,' my shoulders dropped three inches. My jaw unclenched. It was physical. It was visceral. Forgiveness is not just a mental exercise; it is a physiological release. It is the exhale after holding your breath for ten years. So how do we actually do it? It’s not a one-time event. It’s a practice. It’s a daily choice to rewrite the story. Instead of saying, 'I was such an idiot for doing that,' try saying, 'I was learning.' Instead of 'I ruined everything,' try 'I discovered what didn’t work.' We need to treat our past mistakes as data points, not defining characteristics. Every error is a lesson wrapped in discomfort. If you can extract the lesson, you can discard the shame. Ask yourself: What did I learn about my boundaries? What did I learn about my values? What did I learn about my capacity? Once you have the lesson, the shame has no more utility. It has served its purpose, however poorly. Now it’s time to retire it. You don’t need to share this lesson with anyone. You don’t need to post about it or apologize for it again. It belongs to you. It is part of your map. And maps are meant to guide you forward, not anchor you to the spot where you got lost. There is a beauty in imperfect progress. It is messy and non-linear. Some days you will forget. Some days the shame will rush back in like a tide. That is okay. Do not beat yourself up for forgetting to forgive yourself. That is just another layer of the wound. Be gentle. Bring the kindness back. Imagine your younger self standing in front of you. She looks scared. She looks tired. She is waiting for you to tell her it’s going to be alright. Can you do that? Can you look her in the eye and say, 'I see you. I love you. And you are forgiven'? It might feel awkward at first. It might feel fake. That’s fine. Play the part until it becomes real. Because eventually, it will become real. And when it does, you will feel lighter. You will feel freer. You will have space for joy, for connection, for life. Life is happening right now. Not in the past. Not in the future. Right here. In this breath. In this moment. You deserve to be present for it. You deserve to be kind to yourself. You deserve to let the stone go. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I’m Marissa Davidson, and I’ll be right here next week, ready to walk with you again. Until then, be gentle with yourself. You’re doing better than you think.