Guilt and Grief

Ever have a day when you just feel awful?

You insulted a friend inadvertently, or perhaps judged someone in the grocery store because You find their behavior stupid?

Yeah me too.

Guilt can be quite a weight for someone to bear. It can feel like a pebble in your hand one day, and the next a boulder hanging around your neck. Guilt can be an emotion we sometimes we wish we didn’t feel. If we face our guilt, it leads to emotional pain for ourselves. Pain we have felt too many damn times already in life already. There are enough demons and monsters in the world to inflict wounds against us. Why should we add to the stack?

Because by acknowledging our guilt for whatever we did, we can begin to heal. No one ever said healing was a pleasant experience, but it is a freeing one.

As a teenager, my mother and I fought often. She wanted to go horseback riding. I wanted to go see my friends. She wanted to go out partying with her friends and get drunk, leaving my sister and I to fend for ourselves. She had divorced my dad and found the arms of other men more inviting. Then, one day in early September 23 years ago, my mother died. She had breast cancer that had spread to other vital systems in her body. We discovered her condition to only see her pass 3 weeks later. Strangely, I remember not feeling anything at the time of her death. If anything, a part of me was glad she was put out of her misery. She was a pitiful person that couldn’t’ be happy. All of these admissions of my younger self are very harsh, and quite cruel of a child to say of their mother. The woman who had carried me biologically in her womb had died. Besides feeling a biological link sever, I felt nothing.

After that, I spent a good deal of my 20’s trying to reconcile my identity with what many friends and fellow churchgoers thought I should be. I was so lost and angry. I didn’t know how to reconcile it, and before long, I sought the arms of men to fill that uncertainty. As I’m sure we all know, that didn’t quite do the trick. I was still empty. Anger was still there. If someone asked me about my childhood, I’d just say it wasn’t the nicest. If people asked about my mother, I simply said she was a lost cause. I still felt those feelings of resentment and anger towards her. What I did not realize was how much I had integrated those feelings into who I was. A reckoning with myself was coming.

Fast forward to my early 30’s. I was acknowledging my mother’s passing again, but this time I asked myself: why do I still harbor all these feelings of anger towards her? I started to list off my judgements against her to only discover that the very judgements I had against her were the very same things I was doing. It felt like a gut punch. I gasped. I couldn’t believe the revelation I had discovered. My anger had driven me to arrogance and a “holier than thou” state of mind when it came to my mom, when in fact, I’m just as much of a human as she was. Broken, fractured, unworthy (so I thought), unable to be saved. I was beyond redemption. I felt the waves of guilt pull me under to drown. This lead to a night when I was suicidal. I didn’t attempt, or do anything physical, but the dark thoughts and state of mind were very much there. How could I look at her picture ever again and not feel like a terrible person? Her demons were also mine. I felt worthless. I didn’t want to feel such shame and guilt. I wanted it to end.

But for whatever reason, I relented in not ending my life that night. And I will say that it was one of the hardest things I chose to not do.

As I took the time to process the guilt, I slowly found healing and reconciliation. However, I couldn’t say it her face. I couldn’t look at her, with tears in my eyes and say “Mom, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me” or “Mom, please find it in your heart to forgive me for having such anger towards you for so many years. I love you.” I cried. A lot.

I went to social media to write a long post about my discovery and the guilt I felt. In it, I asked my mother to forgive me, if she could hear me. I recall a person commenting that as a mother, she knew my mother would have forgiven me and that she loved me still. I cried again.

Those tears that came were healing. They were a turning point for me emotionally. Instead of despising what my mother was, I began to see her brokenness in me and how that same brokenness was a source of strength not only for me, but for others that were also fighting their own demons.

I have made it part of my charge to tell this story. To carry that banner that not only is who I am, but is my mother too. Her story should not be forgotten. Others need to hear it too. It is my hope that in these words from the floodgates of my heart, you may find healing for whatever guilt you are wrestling. You are worthy of love and all things beautiful. every single bit. And while guilt can feel like an infinitely heavy weight, it is part of the path to healing and reconciling.

Mom, wherever you are, you are not forgotten.

“As long as I’m here as I am, so are you.”
-Ben Platt.