Becoming Her

Most of my day is spent talking with patients who are near the end of their lives. It’s not uncommon for me to have several conversations a day with people in their 90s. I spend a lot of time in reflection as a result. What I’ve noticed is that there tend to be two kinds of people.There are those who carry regret. They hold on to guilt, replay their choices, and spend their final years haunted by the things they wish they had done differently. And then there are others who let that guilt go a long time ago. They embraced change, the good and the bad, and they have a quiet acceptance about how their lives unfolded. They lived. It’s no surprise that those conversations make me reflect on my own life.Of course there are things I wish had been different.. But dwelling on the what-ifs does nothing except keep us stuck. Life is movement. We are constantly changing, constantly evolving, and sometimes the most important thing we can do is learn to move with it, to go with the flow really. We are not built for guilt. Some things require accountability. Some things require asking for forgiveness. But once you walk through the work of healing, you have to leave it where it lies.And it’s worth asking yourself an honest question…Where is your guilt actually coming from? Is it truly your conscience…or is it the weight of other people’s expectations? Are you living your life, or are you living according to what your parents think, what your neighbors think, what your community thinks, what your church thinks, what people expect you to look like from the outside? I’ll use this one example because it’s the most common.Nobody wants a divorce.They ripple through families and they break hearts. But I hear something a lot: “We stayed together for the kids.”We can easily understand this..BUT what does that actually look like sometimes? Separate bedrooms.No affection..No conversations that resolve anything.. arguments..an uneasy undercurrent.Parents who come home to a house where no one smiles and no one is truly connected. Is that the model we think our children should grow up believing love looks like? I don’t believe living in quiet unhappiness is the example we should pass down. I also don’t believe in carrying guilt forever for choosing a different path.This is your life.One day you will reach the end of it, and so will I, just like the people I speak with every day. And when that moment comes, the question on your mind won’t be if people approved of you. The question will be simple. Did you live? Or did you spend your life trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations? Don’t let it be “I wish I would have.”