I wouldn’t have been able to answer this question at the beginning. I didn’t know why. All I knew was I felt it was bigger than me, that my experience was significant enough to share. As time went on, it became clear. After decades of carrying darkness inside of me, I needed to bring it out into the light. I knew if I could do that, it couldn’t hurt me anymore. And I knew if I could do it, maybe it would help other people do the same. I wanted to be a frame of reference, to let people know we’re all so very human. We tend to think we’re the only ones going through something. We tend to carry a lot of blame and shame in situations we feel we created because of our bad judgement or decisions. We can feel utterly alone in our experience.
I wanted people to know there can be an ‘after’. A beautiful, authentic, joyful after. It takes a lot of self-love. I spent a lot of time with myself, prioritizing myself, making all of who I was, totally okay. I had to build me up before I could even talk about what I’d been through. Little by little, the shame fell away, the guilt, the uncertainty. That’s the power of love. I wanted to share that with people. I wanted them to know there’s someone out there who understands what it is to be human.
No One in Their Right Mind isn’t just about me. This wasn’t something to be written and then shelved. I knew early on it was significant and would need to be shared. My hope, at the very least, was that it might foster compassion even in the absence of understanding. Not everybody will go through something like this in their lifetime. To me, this is an opportunity to educate, to make people think, to perhaps shift perspective and soften hearts.
I get why people might question my need to publish this memoir. Why would I want to make so many intimate details public? It’s because I can handle the world knowing if it means others will benefit from my sharing. The thing is, I finally love myself utterly and completely. I’m not afraid to stand in front of the world and say “this is me”. I’ve already worked through the embarrassment and shame and at the end of it all I realized I’m just human like everyone else. We’re all doing the best we can. To admit that I made some unwise choices in my life won’t be the end of me. Quite the contrary. It’s just the beginning.
This is part of a Q&A series I’m doing on Instagram, check it out at c.a.good and follow along!
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