Why you should never wait for an apology

I lived most of my life telling myself the same story. It began with "I was wronged." Then "They didn't appreciate me," it went on. And it wrapped up with "No matter how hard I try, how much I give, I always get taken for granted and never seem to get full credit."

It didn't matter whether I was referring to my personal or professional experience. Same story. The employers who milked me for all they could then shunted me aside to hire and promote fresh blood. The friends and relatives who dismissed me with callous remarks and thoughtless behavior. On and on it went.

One day my massage therapist asked me, "What do you get out of telling yourself that story?" (She became my business coach—shout-out to Carolina Lopez!)

That ended the story-telling right then and there.

I saw that it was a sick pattern. It's the opposite of empowering when you keep projecting the past onto the present and future. It might have felt comforting at the start to have a place to lay the blame for disappointments and a reason for festering resentment. But then the comforting turns into self-coddling. You nurse your boo-boo too long and before you know it you're stunted. An emotional gnome.

The breakthrough was realizing that it was a story. That's all it was. I could change it. I could reframe it. I could start from scratch if I wanted. And it doesn't depend on whether the people I've cast as oppressors ever own up to bad behavior and apologize. They likely won't.

I can tell that I've moved on, from re-reading this post I wrote on my List of Unjust Utterances back in 2010. It's a short compilation of the mindless things people have said to me that raised the fur on my back. They don't have an effect on me now. Maybe enough time has passed, maybe very few of those people are still in my orbit. 

Or maybe I truly don't care what people think of me. Those people, in particular.

Just for sport, I tried to imagine what it would be like to meet each one again and be offered apologies. Here's where it gets ugly.

Not because I wouldn't accept the apologies—I would, without hesitation. But what I realized was that just to be able to imagine them apologizing, I would have to set aside my long-held judgment of them as nasty people. Whoa! 

Me: good. Them: bad. If I can't tell myself that story anymore, I'd have to...give it up and um, grow!

Easier to just carry around a memory file of them as villains.
Easier to imagine myself taking the high road and forgive them without being asked.

So let's consider this quote from Robert Brault: "Life becomes easier when you learn to accept the apology you never got."

Yes, it allows you to move on. Don't wait for an apology; act as if you already accepted it. BUT: don't paint yourself as the big-hearted hero and the other person as evil incarnate. Leave room for the possibility, if not the probability, that they might wake up and evolve at some point.

We don't hold the patent on sainthood.

When you ask, "Am I enough?"

 A young, brilliant woman I know via the blogging world posted a question that prompted me to comment. She asked, "Am I enough?" Halfway through, I realized I was writing a blog post myself. This is the unabridged version of it:

I think what you're really asking, Joy, isn't "I wonder if I'm enough to my son?" but "Am I enough to myself?" It's a healthy question to ask. You're in a great position, knowing without a doubt that you are fulfilling to the maximum your roles as mom and wife. Therefore you can come from a place of abundance, not lack, and proceed with grace toward growth, not scratch for survival. Your son will of course express his preference for having unlimited access to you indefinitely. But we know children turn into teenagers, and the preference for having his privacy and his own path takes over. You don't want to wait until then to answer your question.

"We have known all our lives that being evaluated objectively by the outside world shapes our identities, gives us affirmation and boosts our self-confidence and sense of worth." What I've learned (and wish I'd known in my early 20s of SAHMothering) is while the outside world does boost our sense of worth, the true source of that worth is within—the inner world. The tricky part is that no amount of positive talk, e.g. repeating "I am enough" can substitute for experiencing that this is true.

How does one attain that experience? I'm sure there are other ways for other people, but I can only speak from my own experience. I found it in meditation. I was coming out of a regular 15-minute practice one Saturday morning in March. I was just starting to open my eyes, when an inexplicable flash of KNOWING came upon me. I saw myself for the first time as God actually sees me. Nothing about my past (accomplishments, failures) factored into it. Nothing about my future (goals, desires, mistakes) entered the equation. Just me in the present, a sneak preview of the glorious, unseparate Self we are told we revert to when we die in grace.

I hear what my younger self, and possibly you, would be thinking right now: All this is fine and good for someone older, like me, who has already built and walked away from several careers. We have the luxury of having proven ourselves to ourselves and to the world. Yesterday I was talking to a fellow yoga teacher trainee, who is 19. She was wishing me luck as I waited to hear back from a magazine editor on a paid internship. I realized that I was fine with whatever her decision might be. If I get it, great. If not, on to the next challenge. A delicious state of detachment from results while maintaining optimism and confidence.

It is a gift to have experienced my Self so early in my meditative path. It would be utopia if every single person did, because we would conduct our lives and relate to every other created being so differently from the way we habitually do. Instead of competing and comparing, we would collaborate and encourage. But in the meantime, what is a gal to do when she asks herself, "Am I enough?"

I suspect the answer will be "Yes!" when you identify, pursue, draw boundaries around, and nurture your passion(s) in life. These will be apart from your husband and son. There is a great chance that in finding your passion you will realize your purpose in life. Again, apart from being a mother and wife.

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

You can read Joy Page Manuel's post on her blog here.

The tipsy post: What if something you believe about yourself isn't a hard fact?

A quarter of a glass of Riesling is slinking down my throat as I type this. Until recently, I would've snorted if you had forecast that I'd be swilling wine. It won't be long before I'll be too sleepy to spell straight. Yup, I'm a lightweight. Lucky I'm not in the demographic of drunk texters.

One of the definites about me had always been "I don't drink." But that, along with a number of things I used to believe about myself, is no longer true. You ever have something hit you like that? At midlife, no less.

I used to believe I could think my way out of anything rash. We moved when Dad retired, so I attended two high schools, both all-girls. At one school, girls were getting pregnant and dropping out. At the other, they were dating each other, breaking up, and attempting to off themselves. I was running for student government. I was directing the one-act play for the annual competition. I was volunteering as a catechism teacher for first graders at a nearby school.

People were alienated by my lack of humor. At 14, I was seized with an urgent desire to fit in, so I cheated—once!—on a Biology exam. Of course I got caught; I hadn't had time to perfect my technique. When they summoned my Mom to the office I told her it was probably for some missing silverware from a campus event I had staffed. The principal had to set her straight about her high-achieving daughter. Mom asked why someone like me would need to cheat. Ms. Principal said some girls are never content with the high grades we already have. Oh, that principal thought she had my number.

Mom never gave me grief for broadsiding her like that. I wonder why. My Dad dictated my letter of apology to the principal, and I wasn't expelled. I don't think the cheating episode created enough notoriety for me to fit in. I hardly recognized my impulsive self.

Attending a Catholic university by age 15, I became aware, just barely, that some of my classmates smoked pot. I tried it once at 17 and flunked a P.E. exam. This was the same year I broke up with my first boyfriend and took up smoking for exactly seven days.

The night I turned 21, I asked a co-worker to join me for pizza. We got into a little necking outside the pizza joint. Hmm. Why hadn't I been self-conscious about my garlic breath? His proposition was rather banal. I still recall exactly what we said:

"We can do this any way you want. I'll do whatever you want," said the guy, whose girlfriend was pregnant with his child. I instantly reverted to my sensible self, the one who wouldn't have invited any guy in a relationship to anything outside of work.

"I just wanted to have pizza on my birthday," I reasoned with him. You think the French kissing might've sent a mixed message? 

His ego bruised, he started a rumor that I'd been trysting with him for several months. I actually got called in to Human Resources. The HR director had her jaw open, about to address the situation, when someone walked in. She dropped the matter altogether. I put an end to the gossip by sending the guy a fake telegram of his own obituary. Remember telegrams?

I thought I'd put my good girl-gone-bad episodes behind me. One year and one move across the Pacific Ocean later, I started dating a man hovered over by three forceful females: his domineering mother, his wacko-off-her-meds ex-wife (I know, it's a cliché to call the ex- names), and their strong-willed 3-year-old daughter. They also had a one-year-old daughter who was a people pleaser even at that age. Technically the ex- wasn't an ex- yet, as they had only been separated for three months. The divorce wasn't final until nine months after we met and began dating. 

Throughout the 12 months we dated, I lugged around a mental picture of Catholic finger-wagging. I was ashamed to be dating a married man. I had saved myself for someone who hadn't wasted any time getting in bed with someone before me. Yes, I did think like that in those days. I probably should've given him a pass considering he had a 10-year headstart on life.

Part of the reason I agreed to marry him was that I was so convinced I would make a much more stable mother figure for the girls than their own mother and grandma. Call me Ernestina With a Mission. That's what I used to believe about myself.

As a parent, I was stable, sure, but also very strict and impatient. I'd been raised in a military family. There was no talking back, no sir. To the two daughters, we added a third daughter, and all three had to put up with my ramrod straight mindset.

The experience of full-custody stepparenting through the teen years merits its own blog post, one I may not ever write. Suffice it to say the conflicts over parenting styles strained at the seams of our marriage. I once wailed at my husband, "I hate what you've turned me into—a stepmom!"


Once, we were camped out on the living room floor watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It was the episode in which Buffy wants to go to bed with Angel even though she's been warned all hell would break loose.

Famous line by Buffy: "What if I never feel this way again about anybody?"
Cue loud snort and guffaw from the stepmom. Teen daughters pretend not to know I exist.

I moved out on year 14. By then I was OVER feeling guilty and being blamed for everything. The gulf between us yawned wide and unbridgeable. I lost my appetite. I cried every night the first week at my spare little apartment. I'm sure everyone else in the family was suffering, but I was too walled up to empathize. We mourned the death of the future we thought we'd been assured.

Being suddenly single at 38 was hard to wrap my head around. Especially being single in the U.S.! I would be expected to put out when I dated...w-w-what?!? I vowed to not date for at least two years. Then I heard myself on the phone with a longtime friend, toying with the idea of being promiscuous. If not now, when?

It stayed hypothetical. A puny part of it was my choice, but more of it was God rearranging circumstances. It was the biggest revelation about myself thus far. Left to my own devices long enough, devoid of the hedge of marriage and family, I could see that I might spin myself into a series of poor choices until I couldn't find my way back to me.

A marriage revived is like coming back from the dead. At least I think it is, but don't quote me, I've never been dead. I moved back home five years after we separated.

Sounds like a happy ending, right? Is that why I'm swilling wine? Am I toasting my cushy life?

Well, let me tell you. A week after my 50th birthday last Thanksgiving, the universe gifted me with a surprise: my first anxiety attack, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. I didn't know what it was when it was happening. Google filled me in. The most bewildering aspect of my anxiety attack is how my mind has finally betrayed me. It has no control over the physical symptoms. I'd love to say that this is life's final blow to debunk my belief that I can reason my way out of anything. But I've gained a bit of humility about that.

I've had around five or six more attacks since then, none quite as wild. I've debriefed women my age, including my yoga mates, my dance mates, and the knowledgeable staff at the local Sprouts grocery. I've stocked up on chamomile tea, linden tea, lemon-flavored magnesium powder to fizz in the tea, mineral bath salt, evening primrose oil, chewable stress relief gummies, and, for the worst of the worst insomnia-plus-anxiety, non-addictive sleep aid tablets. My husband's Christmas gift to me this year was aromatherapy for anxiety.

"Mom, you should drink a little Riesling, it doesn't have a lot of sugar," advised my best friend/youngest daughter, 26. She took in the information, processed it with the fact that the tannins in red wine devastate my head, and came up with her solution.

I'm taking her advice.