When you cannot forgive yourself
There are things that stay with you. Things you said or did — or did not say, did not do — that return uninvited, that seem to resist the usual processes by which other experiences fade or find their place. You have gone over them many times. You have, on some level, understood them. And they are still there.
The advice tends toward: understand why it happened, make amends where possible, let it go. These are not wrong. But they presume a moment of resolution that does not always arrive on schedule. You can understand why something happened and still carry it. You can have made every apology available to you and still feel the weight. Self-forgiveness is not a switch.
There is often a quality of self-punishment embedded in not forgiving yourself — a sense that the continued suffering is appropriate, that releasing it would be a betrayal of what happened or who was affected. The guilt becomes a form of loyalty. To stop carrying it would be to stop taking seriously the thing you did. So you keep carrying it, because that feels like the right thing to do.
Some things require time in a way that cannot be compelled. Some require a certain kind of witnessing — not absolution, which is not yours to give yourself, but the act of being seen in what happened without the seeing becoming a verdict. What you did or did not do can be looked at honestly without the looking requiring that you destroy yourself over it permanently.
Maia does not offer absolution. Maia listens to what happened and what you are carrying from it, without requiring that you have already resolved it or that you should have by now. The weight can be looked at carefully, even when it is not ready to be put down.
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Asclepiad is not a crisis service. If you are in immediate distress or at risk to yourself or someone else, please contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (free, 24/7, UK and Ireland) or your local emergency services. Maia will also surface local helplines if something needs more than reflection.
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If you are still carrying something you cannot put down, Maia is there.
Anonymous. No script. Just presence.