In March, I participated in a Self-Care Circle on Zoom where our topic was Forgiveness.
In free-writing about forgiveness, I was fascinated to see a list of things I need to forgive myself for.
For the times I don’t follow through.
For judging my past self harshly when I was doing the best I could at the time.
For being unkind to my body when what was hurting was in my heart and head.
For not getting the things I’m thinking, feeling, and learning onto my Substack!
This isn’t to say that I just let myself off the hook regarding taking ownership of these things. Rather, it means giving myself grace to own and examine them without the mist of self-judgment clouding my thinking.
When contemplating life, it can be easy to stay with negative feelings and use them to avoid that examination. At the end of life, this is especially true. RUGS - Regrets, Unfinished Business, Guilt, Shame - are a collection of what underlies much of that judgment and negative feeling. As a doula, I sometimes use this RUGS framework to help the examination process. When coming to the end of life, it’s a challenge to look at our RUGS and those of the people we love. Taking a brave step to open up to ourselves, and often to others, can be freeing.
Guilt and shame are complex and can be confusing. In her book The Gifts of Imperfection Brené Brown looks at shame and guilt and writes “Shame is about who we are, and Guilt is about our behaviors.” ( pg 57, 2020 edition) To me, this is looking inward - who I am and what is “bad” in me, and looking outward - what I’ve done that affects others.
Carrying around a lifetime of RUGS can be heavy. When I work through life transitions with my clients, it’s often a good exercise not only to identify what’s weighing us down but to then experiment with setting it all aside, even for a moment. What does it feel like to have that weight lifted? We can always pick it up again, and often we do! But identifying the RUGS and giving ourselves grace to be free of them is a worthwhile effort.
So here we are at the beginning of another month. I’m posting this, and writing on several more topics in preparation for regular posts in the coming weeks. When life gets in the way, I’ll give myself grace to regroup and begin again.
And, May The Fourth Be With You