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Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity: Real Women, Real Talk for Personal and Professional Development
Regrets and Forgiveness: An Unsettling Memory
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SHOW DESCRIPTION
Regrets and Forgiveness: An Unsettling Memory
Have you ever felt an unsettling regret that lingers for years? I share an emotional, personal story about a little girl who lived across the hall. As I contemplate my regret and quest for self-forgiveness, I also explore how we can turn regrets into relief. Join me with a drink, as we discuss how to heal and forgive ourselves, even for what we didn't know.
TL;DR
In this episode, share a personal story about a lingering regret and explore how to turn regrets into self-forgiveness and healing.
Time Stamps
00:00 Introduction and Trigger Warning
00:59 Setting the Scene: A Mysterious Neighbor
03:24 The Little Girl and Her Father
07:18 The Family Disappears
09:31 Reflecting on Regret and Forgiveness
13:14 Lessons on Regret and Forgiveness
19:17 A Heartfelt Apology and Conclusion
CONNECT WITH ME
RESOURCES
Note: I do not have any affiliations with, sponsorships or endorsements from any of the resources mentioned. They are listed for your reference.
Mental Health Resources
Ph: 988
National Institute of Mental Health
Sexual Violence Resources
Ph: 800.656.HOPE (4673)
Substance Abuse Resources
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Credits
Podcast Editor: Payton Cross Productions
Coming up next on Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity. I suddenly got a very cold. and unsettling feeling. It was something I couldn't shake for years. One day. I saw the car was gone and so was the little family from across the hall. We were both walking around with one of the biggest regrets of our lives and never said anything. Disclaimer: Today's episode, while not explicitly mentioning specific triggering topics, will allude to topics that may be triggering for some. Please feel free to skip this episode and join me for the next one. If you are not in the best mental health state right now to listen. As always, there are resources available in the show notes to help you. I use them, and I hope you will too, anytime that you need them. I've rarely talked about the situation I'm going to talk about today. While I am centering myself in this particular situation, I want to say unequivocally that, ultimately, it really isn't about me. I can only share my perspective as the outsider that was looking in and say to you that it is one of two situations in my life that I regret. I may have said this in previous episodes. If not, I'll share it here or repeat myself. I have one major philosophy in life. That philosophy is this: I don't believe in regrets if you learned from your mistakes. While I did learn from this particular situation, it's still a big, if not one of my biggest regrets. It's a situation that I'm still trying to forgive myself for. Honestly, I don't know if I ever will. It all started with the quiet, blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl who lived. Hey Girl, have you been looking for a safe space for women to have authentic conversations around everything that impacts our life, careers, and relationships? I'm Shai Boston, and on this show, I talk about all things connected to our personal and professional development so we can live our best and authentic lives. Grab a drink. Sit back and let's have a chat. It's time for some Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity. Today. I'm drinking some Stella Rosa Black I wanted a little something mellow and this fits the bill. So what are you having today? Something that I hope is helping you to be mellow as well. Maybe it's tea or coffee, hot water with lemon or a nice little libation. Whatever it is, let's take our sip together and now let's get into it. I don't remember the day that she moved in across the hall from our apartment. I don't even recall when I first saw her. Suddenly, she was just there. This tiny, little, blonde haired, blue eyed little girl who looked no older than about six or seven years old. I do remember when I first noticed her, she was in some princess jammies. She had opened the door to the apartment around the same time that I did, and I saw her standing there just staring at me in wonderment. I don't remember exactly how old I was. I'm guessing 15, 16, probably 16 because I was driving and I think I was leaving that day to go somewhere, so I would have been driving. But anyway, I was heading out and we briefly encountered each other. I kindly spoke in a way that you would to a little kid. She didn't speak. She just stared with those beautiful little blue eyes, which is nothing unusual for a kid, right? So I didn't think much of it. I recall seeing just over her head into the apartment and I saw that it was relatively empty, didn't really see a whole lot of furniture, but the way that our apartments were set up I just figured it might have just been the angle because you'd have to go into the apartment and go around the kitchen in order to actually come into the living room area. So I just figured it was the angle. Anyway, I just went on about my day after that initial encounter. I recall them being relatively quiet. You'd hardly notice that there was anyone living across the hall. There would be the occasional run in with the mysterious little girl, where she'd stare in just wonderment. Or, maybe it was just sadness? A pleading? In thinking back on her eyes, I don't really know what I saw. And wonderment may not have been it. No matter what, I'd try to give her a smile. One day, I noticed that her dad, or the person I presumed to be her dad, um, was there with her. He was tall, blonde, blue eyed, I believe. Hair kind of swept to the side a little bit. You could tell there's a little bit of a receding hairline. It looks like he might've been late thirties, early forties. And he was also relatively quiet. He would politely smile whenever my mom and I would pass them in the walkway, or if we happened to come out of our apartments at the same time. He never said much. The little girl, I don't think ever spoke or smiled. I just figured she wasn't used to being around strangers. We were living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I know she was used to seeing Black people, especially in relatively middle class family neighborhoods. So that wasn't it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. There were times when the little girl would open the door, and I noticed that her face had some visible dirt on it. Again, not unusual for a kid. Except I never saw her play outside, not even with the other kids that lived in the complex. I recall seeing her father's station wagon, or was it some kind of a hatchback? It was yellow. The windows were dirty, you know, kind of filmy like, so they were kind of cloudy. The car itself was dirty and there were tons of newspapers and other junk inside of it. It kind of raised alarms, but I just thought he could be a messy person. While our rare encounters were pleasant and nothing to write home about, one day I saw the car was gone and so was the little family from across the hall. It's as if they left overnight. Mom and I briefly talked about it and we never talked about them again for many, many years. One day, that little girl and her father came across my mind. I suddenly got a very cold and unsettling feeling. It was something I couldn't shake for years. I finally got up the nerve to talk to my mom about it and shared with her what I was thinking and feeling. And quite simply, it was this. I came to believe that the cute little girl across the hall was a kidnap victim, whether custodial parent or otherwise. To this day, I believe that the man that lived across the hall with her felt we were getting a little too comfortable speaking to the little girl every time we could, and that made him uncomfortable. She was supposed to go unnoticed. Hence, she was rarely seen and she never spoke. In an apartment complex, maybe he thought, why would anyone pay attention to another child when there's tons of children around? I don't know. The man knew the kind of women that my mother and I are and were at that time. I feel that if he didn't get out of dodge soon, he would end up facing typical neighborly questions about the little girl. I do seem to recall that we did ask her her name and age. I don't remember what he said. It's all a block. And I remember she just stood there quiet. Finally, I confessed to my mom that I felt guilty. Because I never called the authorities or expressed my concerns even to her. She admitted to me she felt the same herself. We were both walking around with one of the biggest regrets of our lives and never said anything. I'm guessing because we didn't know how. I don't know if we felt shame. No, we felt some sort of shame. I'm positive about that. All I know is that down to this day, we have regretted not doing more. We regretted not stepping in to possibly save that little girl from the trap we now know she was likely living in. That's the hard thing about regrets and forgiveness. Regrets are grounded in what we could have done, should have done, would have done, based on the knowledge we have now. We didn't know a lot about child abductions then. Fortunately and unfortunately, they were rare and not as commonplace as they are now. It wasn't something widely talked about and not something the public was widely educated on. Just a few years prior to this kids were being taught about child protective services and how to report abusive situations at home. But nobody told us what to do when or how to assess if there was a possible kidnap or exploitation victim in our midst. We knew about"Stranger Danger", for sure. But that was if you and your friends were playing outside, walking home from school, or the mysterious van was coming down the street and it wasn't your usual ice cream truck. Nothing about recognizing a potentially dangerous situation for someone else that may look somewhat normal was ever taught to us. After the regrets kick in, you're now fighting to forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself for not acting. Forgiving yourself for not speaking up. Forgiving yourself for not paying attention to the warning signs. Forgiving yourself for not knowing what you didn't know. Forgiving yourself for not forgiving yourself. And then that brings up even more questions. How do you forgive yourself for something you didn't know or weren't educated about? How do you forgive yourself for not taking action when you didn't know you should take action? Or when you felt a hunch in your gut and ignored it? While you may not have dealt with a situation like this, have there been other situations you have dealt with that filled you with so much regret that it's been challenging to forgive yourself? Do these questions resonate with you and even make you feel some type of way? I want you to take a moment and breathe. This is a safe space to feel those feels and admit to those weighty feelings. One of the most important things I want you to take away from this, and believe me, it's a lesson I am constantly working on remembering and it's this: Regrets and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin if you don't use the coin, right it will have little value for you. I'm going to take a sip right now. Regrets are only valuable in the sense that they show us we have grown and matured. Perhaps life experiences or new knowledge allows us to see things differently than we did before. That's why we usually regret something. That is valuable. That's the only thing I want you to walk away with when it comes to regrets. When you look at it that way, there's no additional burden from the woulda, coulda, shouldas. It's simply recognizing that you know more now than you did then. Being better informed means you can now make better decisions. You can take different actions. That, my Sistafriends, is a relief not a burden Forgiveness. Mm hmm. Well, that can take a little longer and requires real effort on our part. How do you forgive yourself? The reality is that it takes work to forgive yourself for where you were and the knowledge you had then based on the knowledge you have now. When you can say, I know better now, you can do better that one statement alone allows you to show yourself some grace, some mercy, some compassion. So you forgive yourself for where you were then and the knowledge that you had then, based on the knowledge you have now. You know better, so you can do better. You simply didn't know what you didn't know. That doesn't mean that, depending on the circumstances, there may not have been ramifications for not taking the actions you would now. The ramifications of my not trying to do more at that time is that I will never know the truth. I will never know what happened to that little girl. I will never know how her life turned out. In giving myself some grace, I was able to start the process of forgiving myself. No. I have never fully forgiven myself. I am trying. I don't know if I ever can. It's a work in progress and I'm sure it'll be the same for you. That forgiveness will be a work in progress. While I do encourage us to forgive ourselves, especially for our own healing, I also get that forgiveness is a complex emotion with so many layers. It's not always as straightforward as we'd like it to be or as clean and smooth as we'd want. Nonetheless, it is worth the effort. Forgiveness allows us to remove the weights and burdens of shame and judgment that often holds us back from healing emotionally, mentally, and physically. Forgiveness allows us. to keep doing better, to take action, and move forward. Forgiveness doesn't have to happen overnight. It could take months, years, or even decades like it has for me. The point is let's work to forgive ourselves for those situations we are holding in our bag of regrets. And while we're at it, let's empty our bag of regrets and see what we learned. Then put that book on the shelf and don't pick it up again. There's no need to be weighed down by regret and lack of forgiveness. We have more to gain from working to let them go than holding onto or holding back from them. Simply take it one step at a time. In due time, as we walk on this path together, our regrets will become our relief, and our ability to forgive ourselves will free us to keep moving forward on this path of healing. With that said, to that blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl that I never really got to know, I want to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't know better. I'm sorry that I didn't do more to connect and try to help. I'm sorry for a lot of things. I sincerely hope that you were able to have a better life and get the help you needed in every way. And I hope that one day you can find it in your heart to forgive that young teenage girl just as she hopes to one day forgive herself. So, what did you think about today's episode and topic? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Or, you can tell me how you're going to use today's information in your day to day life. You can do that by leaving me a message on my fan page at Fanlist.com/CoffeeCocktailsClarity. In the meantime, may you and yours be safe and well, until we meet again for more Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity.
