[Image description: A photo taken through a window of the evergreen treeline at the edge of a property. There is a woodpile, covered in a black tarp, capped with a few feet of snow. You can faintly see other houses between the trees.]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much people seem to struggle with acknowledging when they have messed up in the past. When they have been problematic, when they have unintentionally hurt someone. When they make mistakes in the present.
And look, none of us have all the answers or all the knowledge in the universe. Sometimes we just simply don’t know something. But it’s our job that when we DO know something to integrate it. The saying, “when you know better, do better,” is used so much because that’s the goal. There is no finish line of growth. The human existence is one that is a journey. To acknowledge that at one point you didn’t know better (and still have room for improvement) isn’t a judgement about you.
I am so open about my journey and past mistakes because I’m not ashamed of who I am because of how far I’ve come.
Were some of the mistakes I’ve made (and continue to make) deeply shameful? Absolutely. Do I work every day to try to do better? Absolutely.
If you struggle to be honest about your past mistakes, without having to “qualify” them, to explain away why at the time you chose that path, made that insensitive comment, didn’t know better, I urge you to sit with that. Is it because you haven’t taken the steps since to make it right with actions, not just empty words? Is it because you feel like you have grown enough as a person?
Sit with it.
The more openly you can just accept the ways you were, frankly, a shitty human, a shitty friend, a shitty partner, without having to qualify the WHYS, the more infinite your growth potential can be.

We never have all the answers and we never have zero potential for being harmful to the world. But we always have room to be more caring, more humbled, and more impactful.

-Katelyn