Episode 21: How do I forgive myself?
To create space for Jackie to write her upcoming book, To You Who Wonders – an advice column meets memoir – she will be reading from her past column, Ask JKE, for Virtuvi's Natural Habitat Magazine.
This week, she is answering the question "How do I forgive myself for the way I acted at the height of my depression? How do I forgive myself for the pain I caused the ones I love? How do I forgive myself for losing myself...losing my spark? All the consequences of dealing with depression? How do I stay kind to myself when I know I am not showing up as my best self while still navigating emotional wounds and pain?" She reflects on the answer she wrote so many years ago and shares her reflections, what has evolved since, what she would have written differently or what she was experiencing at the time she wrote it.
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We hope that you get something helpful out of this conversation. If anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.
Make sure to listen until the end to hear the question we will be diving into on the next episode. And if you feel inspired to respond to this asker and are interested in being a guest of this episode, or if you have a short word of wisdom for them, write to us on the contact page on youandipodcast.com or DM us on Instagram at @youandi.podcast.
Episode Resources:
Jackie Kai Ellis: Website / Instagram
Vitruvi's Natural Habitat Magazine: Website / Instagram
You & I Podcast: Website / Instagram
Resources on finding trusted professional help can be found here.
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The following transcript was automatically generated. Please be aware that it may contain errors. Thank you for your understanding.
Welcome to You and I.
I'm Jackie Kai Ellis and it's my genuine hope that through sharing our most vulnerable stories we know, in the moments where it matters so much, that we're actually not alone. It needs to be said, I'm not a professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what it doesn't. And don't hesitate to seek out professional help through trusted source. We’ve provided links on our website in case you need them..
For the next couple of months I’ll be focused on writing my upcoming book, To You Who Wonders, an advice column meets memoir. So to make space for that, I’m sharing words from my past advice column, Ask JKE, one I wrote for Vitruvi’s magazine, Natural Habitat.
It’s been a few years since I wrote them, some advice is timeless, and yet because my perspective is so different, my advice could be too. So in these episodes, I’ll read out the column and also share my reflections, what has evolved, what I would write differently or what I was experiencing at the time I wrote it.
Today, I’ll be reading the column I wrote in answer to the question, “How do you forgive yourself?”
They write:
Dear JKE
How do I forgive myself for the way I acted at the height of my depression? How do I forgive myself for the pain I caused the ones I love? How do I forgive myself for losing myself...losing my spark? All the consequences of dealing with depression? How do I stay kind to myself when I know I am not showing up as my best self while still navigating emotional wounds and pain?
-The Sorry Depressed
Dear The Sorry Depressed,
In the depths of depression’s waters, when you are fighting for air, those who are courageous and loving enough to jump in with you will sometimes get hurt.
It’s heartbreaking for everyone. Because even if they forgive us, forgiving ourselves is often the hardest part.
I don’t know what pains you’ve caused, but regardless, I have no judgement; I am no judge. We have all done regretful things that we can likely trace back to survival mechanisms we created as children. Whether we’ve pushed people away or pulled them too close, whether we’ve been aggressors or enablers, it’s true that if we scratch the surface of any story, everyone is fighting their own hard battle. Yours is depression.
It must also be said that, while there is empathy and understanding, it doesn’t mean our actions are without consequence. We push a ball, it rolls; we push, it hurts. Like ripples in water, the decisions we make matter—because we matter.
If how our ripples have affected others isn’t sitting right, asking for forgiveness matters greatly. It can calm waters for others; and even if it doesn’t, it calms the waters inside.
Once we have done the scary work of being honest with ourselves and others, and this water becomes still and clear, we have to try our best to let it be. There are times when, even though others have forgiven us, we replay our past and agonize over it, wishing we could have done things differently. We create a “villain story” where the plot is that we don’t deserve forgiveness, that we don’t deserve to make mistakes like everyone else, that we don’t deserve compassion—even when we’re fighting for air. But the danger of this story is that it isn’t true, and our struggling self-torture can create new ripples again and again, re-harming ourselves and others.
So instead of going over past ripples that make you feel sad, what would it look like to start creating ripples that make you smile? We matter, so the decisions we make can matter in a beautiful way, too.
Depression feels like a dark, muffled cocoon to me. It’s altogether suffocating and sadly comforting. It feels like nothing is alive, that there’s just a hollow world you’re not a part of. Nothing sparks, and the most painful part is that you yearn to feel again.
The truth is, depression or not, sparks come and go. Mine has—even at what would seem like the height of my career. Living in Paris, traveling, surrounded by beauty, my spark blew out for years. I tried to get it back desperately, to light it again, until I got very tired and was forced to accept that sparks are beautiful because they are impermanent. Life is not static, so when we are taught that nothing is a given, we learn to appreciate what is truly precious; and we know with the same certainty that what is painful is just as impermanent.
I longed for my spark; I still do. But I choose to learn to love myself in the dark, in every iteration of me. I know that when the spark comes back—and it will as surely as it left—I will savor its bright light so much more. Because now I’m unafraid to sit in the pitch black.
Brokenness is a crucial part of being our best selves, and so are the ones we love. Everyone, in all of history, was and is broken. And everyone deserves a support system.
Yes, we are imperfect. But we are our best selves only when we can say, “I am broken, I am fragile, but I am courageous, because love is resilient.”
As I read this, my heart still goes out to this asker. And I do hope that they have created a space inside themselves, routines, whatever it is they needed to do to feel loved and nourished. A place safe from self-judgment. I hope that they can see themselves clearly, with compassion, love, and the sobriety of acceptance.
I remember when I wrote this, I cried. It was a time in my life when I was also mourning the loss of my own spark. I had been yearning, searching, pining for inspiration, for passion, for a daydream, a desire for anything for so many years. During the years I lived in Paris, many didn’t know that I was so burnt out – by Beaucoup, by failed love – that for years I barely left the womb of my apartment. I was so tired that I would have to talk myself up for days to go down the street to the market for groceries. Most days, all I could do was bathe and hang onto any form of inspiration by photographing beautiful things and sharing them on Instagram. For that time, as pathetic as it may sound, creating beauty for someone out there was my lifeline.
I was not only tired, but I began to realize that I was depressed, again. Only this time, it was different. I recognized the signs, the feelings, the thoughts and, unlike before, I knew this time, I wouldn’t die from it. Though unlike before, nothing I did seemed to alleviate the pain.
I walked the busy streets of Paris in a foggy daze, winded by the social effort of being in public, running errands, talking to cashiers. I was exhausted, trying to drain my social calendar of any obligations. And unlike before, when I would just dive deeper into work, because I had just sold Beaucoup, I had no work to lose myself in, no calling, no passionate obsession. I had nothing to distract myself with.
I do believe this was all perfect, in retrospect: a void in which to face myself again. I believed I was my work, and sought desperately to start a new career. And when nothing came, after many years, and I was too tired to chase and look, when life went on uncomfortably without a “spark” and I was again stripped of more illusions of self from the experience of motherhood, I stopped and saw in this void of my mind, a small mirror.
My reflection looked back…tired and bare, and I realized I was there, without passions, or callings, or work, or Paris, or spaces of healing or woke self work, or even my newly minted role as mother. I was. I am. And so there I began again, discovering who I was, without needing to label it.
When I was back in Paris for the first time years later, the first time since I’d lived there, only now joined by my husband and toddler. I was explaining how far we needed to walk to pick up groceries. I told Joe that it was far enough that we’d likely want to find something closer so as not to exhaust ourselves. But he wanted a good walk, so we went and that’s when I realized this grocery stand was actually just three blocks away. It made me so sad, the idea that my former self was so tired and depressed that a three block walk seemed so far away. And I was relieved and grateful, that without me even realizing it, I had continued to heal, not because I found my spark, but that I realized I didn’t need to be that idealized version of me to be the best version of me, the real me.
I hope you enjoyed this episode in the Ask JKE series. I hope you got something helpful out of this…if anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.
If you have a question you’d like me to explore either on the podcast or in my upcoming book, To You Who Wonders, write to us on the contact page on youandipodcast.com or at toyouwhowonders.com.
If you enjoyed this episode, like and subscribe to our channel, which helps others who might be interested, find us. And feel free to share this episode with someone who may find it helpful as well. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Jackie Kai Ellis, this is you and I.