This is a love letter for everyone who’s shared their failures out loud for me to hear.
Because as I sort through what I feel like are my own failures, what transforms the sword I use to punish myself into an inner dialogue of encouragement and grace are all the ways people I love and admire have failed out loud.
Every time you made a mistake and let the world see- whether you wanted to or not- you showed me that nobody is perfect.
Every time you fell apart, you showed me that it’s ok to not always be strong.
Every time you walked away from a project because it wasn’t working out, you showed me it’s ok to take risks and try things I’m not sure will be a success.
Thank you for swinging big and missing right where I could watch.
I feel like the expectation at this point of the post may be that I should also thank people for “getting back up” for “failing forward” or for learning from their mistakes. Of course, that’s always fantastic to witness. Failure is a necessary ingredient for success.
But not every failure is the soil from which new things grow, and seeing that play out for others is what is the MOST comforting thing to witness.
Sometimes things can just suck and be a big mistake. Sometimes people just walk away from what’s not working.
I don’t know if it’s because as I climb out of these pregnant-&-baby-years trenches I feel like I should be accomplishing more. I don’t know if it’s because I’m nearing the end of my 30s. I don’t know why- but the last two years of my life have left me struggling with a myopic view of my failures.
You could remind me of all of my hard-earned successes, and I’d still find myself re-hashing every failure before I fall asleep at night.
I’ve tried to stop doing that, to reframe the conversation in my head.
But lately, the best way to shush the shame is to think of all the people I know who have failed out loud, and love myself just as much as I still love all of them.
Reading back through this, I feel like I need to clarify that I’m fine. Everything is fine. My marriage is fine.
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1 comment
Thank you for writing this. I just shared it (and my own devastating failure last week)with my pre-med mom’s group. Normalizing our fails brings us closer together.