When Good Women Make Hard Choices—And Learn to Forgive Themselves

I won’t ignore the evidence of good any longer.

I won’t hold a magnifying glass to my mistakes waiting for them to smoke like dry leaves on a hot summer day.

I’ve worked my ass off to be a good person.

How did someone like me—so full of compassion, love, empathy, and concern—turn into a bad person?

I didn't. And I'm not.

I am a good person, but not a perfect one.

So, I refuse to let decades of following the map to the high road be dismissed over the handful of times I got lost.

Sometimes, every right turn you take leaves you with only one turn left—the one that both saves you and makes you die a little inside.

The Truth About Being Human

So, here’s what I’ve decided: INTENT MATTERS

I've decided good people can do bad things for careful reasons and remain good people.

I'm granting myself leniency for the things I did trying to hold my family together, even when those actions caused harm.

Like cracking someone's ribs while performing CPR—I meant well, but something still wound up broken.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s ever felt like this. In a music video that’s been viewed over 61 million times, singer Sara Bareilles sings about my kind of woman:

She's imperfect, but she tries
She is good, but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won't ask for help

-Sara Bareilles “Used to be Mine”

Life should be measured in context and nuance.

The war that rages between "right" and surviving often leaves us struggling to reconcile the person we are with the person we were groomed to be.

But perhaps that's the point—each difficult choice, each regretful moment of putting survival over perfection, shapes us into someone new.

Which leads me to this…

I've decided I am more than the sum of my mistakes, and without them, I would be so much less.

Now when I look for evidence of good, I find it.