Punishing Yourself
This post was shared with me by a woman who was struggling with the shame of her past choices. It was posted on Facebook by “Steve De'lano Garcia” (likely a pseudonym) on November 15, 2025. You can read the full, unedited version here.
"Punishing yourself for who you once were is like trying to heal a wound by reopening it every day. You think that if you keep reminding yourself of your mistakes, your shame, your failures, you will somehow become better, stronger, more worthy. But all that really happens is that you bleed in the same place over and over again. You cannot build a new life while your hands are busy tearing at old scars. You cannot become the woman you are meant to be while you are still dragging the ghost of the girl you used to be through every room of your mind. The past does not get cleaner because you scrub it with guilt. It only gets heavier.
There was a time you did not know what you now know. There was a time you accepted less because you believed you deserved less. You loved the wrong people because you were trying to answer questions about your own worth. You stayed quiet when you should have spoken. You stayed when you should have left. You broke others when you were already broken yourself. None of that makes you a monster. It makes you human. It makes you someone who was trying to survive with the level of understanding and courage she had back then. You may not be proud of her choices, but she is the reason you are still here to make new ones.
You are allowed to look back and say, “I was not who I wanted to be.” You are allowed to cringe, to grieve, to feel sorrow for the hurt you caused others and the hurt you allowed into your own life. That sorrow is a sign that you have grown. But there is a difference between accountability and cruelty. Accountability says, “I see what I did, I understand why, and I will do better.” Cruelty says, “I am unforgivable. I am broken beyond repair.” One lets you move. The other chains you to the floor of your own history. You were never meant to live your whole life in the smallest moment of your worst decisions.
Forgiving yourself is not the same as excusing yourself. It is not pretending that the damage never happened. It is not saying, “It was fine,” when it was not. Forgiveness is you standing in front of the younger version of you, the one who was scared and confused and trying so hard to be loved, and saying, “You hurt people, including yourself. You did. And still, I will not throw you away. I will learn from you. I will protect you now in all the ways no one protected you then.” That is what growth looks like: not a perfect, polished woman, but a woman who has made peace with the girl who did not know how to be one…
Growth asks something much harder than punishment. Punishment is simple: you wake up each day and call yourself terrible names, you replay every mistake, you refuse kindness from others because you are certain you do not deserve it. It feels harsh, and harsh feels honest. But growth asks you to do the honest thing that feels softer and therefore wrong: to look at your reflection and see the whole story, not just the chapters you are ashamed of. Growth asks you to hold your own face in your hands, metaphorically, and say, “We are learning. We are allowed to change. We are allowed to be more than our worst moment.” That softness is not weakness. It is strength that refuses to disguise itself as self-hate.
You do not heal by breaking yourself into smaller and smaller pieces. You heal by gathering every version of yourself—the girl who believed too quickly, the woman who stayed too long, the friend who failed someone, the daughter who said the unforgivable word, the lover who hurt back instead of walking away—and bringing them all into one room inside your heart. You sit them down and say, “You all tried. You tried with what you had. Some of you caused harm. Some of you were harmed. But I will not exile any of you, because I need every lesson you learned. I carry all of you forward, but I do not carry your shame as punishment. I carry your lessons as guidance.”
You are not weak because you cry over the girl you used to be. You are not foolish because your chest tightens when you remember the things you said and did when you did not yet know how to love yourself. Those tears are not proof that you have failed to move on; they are proof that you finally care enough to feel. Let yourself grieve for the years you spent apologizing for simply existing. Let yourself sob for the nights you begged for someone to choose you while you refused to choose yourself. Then wipe your tears and stand up with a different promise: “I will not keep beating the woman I am today for the ignorance of the woman I was yesterday. I will honor her by being better, not by destroying myself in her name.”
So here is the truth you deserve to live by: punishing yourself for who you were will never protect the woman you are becoming. It will only keep her from ever stepping fully into her own life. Growth asks for courage, for responsibility, for change—but above all, it asks for mercy. Especially your own. The most powerful act you can commit as a woman is to look at your past self, with all her flaws and all her fires, and say, “I pardon you. I will learn from your chaos, but I refuse to be chained to it. I choose to grow, not by hating you, but by loving us both into someone new.”
Do you have something to share? Tell us about it.
