My dad’s birthday has me doing a lot of reflecting. It has been twenty months since he passed. Typing that feels unreal - like, the time has stood still and flown by at the same time.

It has only been the last few months that my feelings of guilt and remorse began to soften.

It was really rough. I could hardly give myself a break for being human. I was a bit preoccupied with my own challenges to really know what he was going through and no one else was telling me either.

I was facing some heavy stuff in my life, unfortunately, while he was facing a lot in his life so I wasn’t fully present and I didn’t know or maybe I didn’t let it register.

And for that, I've had a hard time forgiving myself.

I don’t think all of those feelings will ever totally go away, but I am so grateful they have softened because we all know, I can’t change the past and my guilt or remorse wasn’t helping anything.

Part of what helped my self-criticism was my inner work - you know that’s my favorite stuff in the world.

The other part is because I decided to allow the “I wish I would have’s” to fuel something good instead of keeping me feeling bad.

While I can’t change the past, I can put that energy into doing better and helping other people’s lives get better too.

So in a sense, it feels like I am honoring my dad by helping others because he thought what I do is the coolest thing ever.

We're all dealing with so much stuff, but what if we could let go of this stuff so that we could be present now and not be making up for it later?

There are many situations in life that we realize we wish we would have done something differently and sorting out our own stuff allows us the space to be there for others too.

If you feel like that’s something you could look at, might be able to help.