How do we forgive ourselves for our mistakes?

Something stopped me in my tracks today.

Something stopped me in my tracks today.

I was brooding, ruminating over something I’d said — something I’d misjudged. Something that I shouldn’t have done. A ‘rookie error’: something that it’s easy for me to beat myself up about. To say to myself that I should’ve known better, and to feel it, and to believe it because — in the cold light of day, away from the situation, it’s so obvious — and to feel all the more embarrassed and ashamed for it, because everyone knows that pride comes before a fall.

Suffice to say, it was something (externally) minor that left me feeling exposed and vulnerable.

It hurt. And it caught me off guard. And I think that a part of me didn’t expect it to.

I’m good at brushing things off. I’m good at moving on and moving through.

Or moving through to move on, rather.

My instinctual emotional responses no longer have the sway over me that they used to.

I can sit with myself when I feel tender. But this has stuck for a little longer.

And I think that I need to sit with …