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  Military. “Women are not fit to wear a military beret.” “Women with tattoos are trashy.” “Women are not fit to be soldiers.” All these sentiments replayed over and over in my head to the point where it became very clear to me that as a measure to prove him wrong, I simply had no choice but to join the service.

  Blinding white rage.

  I called a recruiter and signed up for the Air Force.

  I asked a friend of mine to ride with me to the tattoo parlor.

  Keep in mind, this is 20 something years ago and I had been raised to believe I was not that smart and was not of the ilk or worthiness of attending college. In fairness, my grades in high school were not what you would consider “ideal” for matriculating. My confidence in attending higher education would come many years later. All of this to say, my plan was to marry someone who would take care of me. Much of my gratitude today is wrapped up in the fact that this individual elected to set me free at the time that he did. So, in conjunction with my beliefs about my lower intelligence, my female gender, and my overall low-quality as a human being in general, combined with my rage were used as fuel to push me through my military training. To add humor, I remember clearly that I had elected to enlist as a security police officer in the US Air Force so that I would be armed with a firearm in a law-enforcement capacity. I chose to become a security police officer with the applicable headwear (beret) for the sole reason of proving a point.

  Do you have a story like this? Can you think back to younger days and remember how you used to feel about yourself and your beliefs about who you were? Do you ever feel like you carry regret about an event in your life that you wish you would have handled differently? What is that event? Does it involve anyone else? If so, was the other person involved offended, insulted, or harmed by your choices in any way? *Digging deeper* Did you ever take ownership of your cause of injury/harm to this person? Why or why not? Remember, and I will continue to remind you the reader, that this is not a “fault finding mission”. It’s about finding truth and isolating where our demons lie and learning how to reframe and let go of issues like this that weigh us down.

  I have a clear understanding of who I was back then. I also understand how that affected the choices that I made. I’m grateful for my time in the military. Albeit unintentional, a side effect of my military service was my ability to remove myself from the conditions of my childhood environment and take advantage of this newfound opportunity of redefining who and what I was. Everyone back home had an opinion of me, or so I assumed. I was not smart and did not come from a family with a good reputation. Everyone back home knew this. My military colleagues did not know this about me and, if they did, it’s highly likely that they would not have cared. Being in basic training offered an opportunity for personal growth unlike any other conditions I’d ever experienced. My training instructors were there to ensure I met my training requirements and nothing more. My training instructors did not care if I succeeded or failed. My success was entirely up to me. I was afforded the same opportunities as the other airmen in my flight and when I graduated basic training, it meant more to me than graduating high school. In fact, it still does to this day. It was the first time in my life when I started to feel as though I could accomplish my goals. If I could successfully complete basic training, then what else was I capable of accomplishing?

  Finding clarity about our life’s choices and how those choices have shaped who we are today can be a heart wrenching and often bittersweet evolution, but it is critical to continue pushing forward and doing the necessary groundwork to move out of shame and pain and into growth, renewal, and healing. This is the only way to live life with joy and love.

  I know without question that had I not had these experiences, I simply would not be where I am today. Therefore, I am deeply grateful for all the hurt and pain that drove me into a situation where I was able to reevaluate my self-worth and my own intellect. It’s difficult for me to imagine a scenario without military service that would have challenged me to push past my own fear-based opinions about myself and learn to cultivate confidence. It’s equally difficult for me to imagine a different scenario that would have propelled me to willingly choose to join the military without having a broken heart fueled by blinding rage. I had been tolerant in my own insecurities and low sense of worth prior to this relationship. It is impossible for me to imagine willfully enlisting in the military with the submissive frame of mind I was in before I met my then boyfriend. That relationship and subsequent break-up created an emotional storm in me that, without these experiences, I don’t think that I would be living a life that is nearly as fulfilling as the one I have today. While painful at the time, I can intertwine these individual experiences into a rich and full history that has propelled me to here. I am deeply grateful.

  What is your narrative? What choices have you made in your past that have brought you to where you are today? More to the point, are you where you want to be? What do you need to do in order to get where you want to be? Are you around the right people? Are you being encouraged? If not, why? I share these stories with you because I understand the pressures of being around stronger personalities and how they can affect your own reality in ways that ,on the surface, do not seem to make sense. The truth is, you can become a better version of yourself. You can make choices to extricate yourself from situations, people, relationships, and jobs etc., that are holding you back from being who you really need to be. It’s not easy to climb a mountain, but it can be done. When you find clarity in the choices that you have made, and you are honest with yourself about why you’ve made these choices, you are able to start reclaiming your own gifts that you have unknowingly surrendered. Perhaps you gave your gifts to other people with the expectation that they will make your life easier or better? I know I did that in a handful of subsequent relationships after I left military service. It’s not a perfect process because growth never is.

  Finding clarity in your life can be difficult simply because we are afraid of what we will see. I want you to know it’s ok. You’re ok. You’re worthy and a part of a greater consciousness. You are no better and no worse than your fellow man because we are all connected and worthy. You deserve the opportunity to conduct a review of your previous choices as a measure of better understanding who you are now versus who you used to be. You may see some things about yourself that make you feel ashamed. Again, remember this is about learning and growing. It is not about judgment and blame. Remember to think back on why you acted the way you did and give yourself the grace and fairness, even if you don’t think that you deserve it. Once you start thinking this way, you will learn to be kinder to yourself and, as a result, your actions will follow in love-based thinking.

  Have you ever carried something so heavy and for so long you relished the thought of putting it down? Did you ever think you “wouldn’t make it” because it’s so heavy? Can you remember the relief of setting it down? How many times have you attempted to bring groceries into the house in one trip? It feels good to put them down, doesn’t it? Emotional clarity works in much the same way. We carry lifelong burdens, unnecessarily, for so long, we don’t even realize we’re so overwhelmed and burdened. You deserve understanding and clarity in finding out what those burdens are, and you deserve the opportunity to be accountable and to take ownership of your mistakes that caused harm to others. You deserve to understand your reasons for your choices, and you deserve to forgive yourself.

  What are you carrying around? If you’ve harmed someone in your past and you want to “fix it,” what would that look like? Sometimes, we are not able to reach out to those we’ve harmed, as a measure of righting the wrongs. Furthermore, we can sometimes create more harm by bringing up the past. Perhaps you feel you’re being punished by carrying around the shame of an event you engaged in that manifested in a mistake of some kind. Perhaps the person that you harmed is nowhere to be found. Perhaps that person has passed on. When you explore the rea
sons for the decisions you made that harmed others, only then will you find the clarity necessary in order to forgive yourself, even if others don’t.

  Chapter Six

  Accountability

  Let’s talk about what it means to be accountable. Why do so many people have a hard time accepting blame when they make an error? Do you have a hard time accepting blame? I know I do. In fact, while conducting research and writing this book, I was pushing this chapter off into a far corner of my mind simply because my subconscious did not want to deal with my need to be accountable. Nobody wants to be at fault. It sucks to be wrong. It makes us feel small and less worthy as human beings. When we admit fault, we somehow feel as though we are opening to the judgments of others and in truth we are, technically. Fortunately, for us, when we screw up, the judgment of others is irrelevant to our own healing. It does not matter that other people revel in our errors. This is a fear-based behavior on their part and is something for them to work through. It is a projection of their own need to protect their veneer. What is important to our own healing is that we are able to identify the thinking errors in other people. While it still happens, it is entirely egocentric (natural selfishness based in human development theory attributed to the behaviors of small children) to allow the judgments of other people to negatively affect us. Granted, this is easier said than done, but we must start somewhere and knowing what this behavior is when it manifests in our world will provide us with the ability to distinguish our healing and growth from other people’s negative projections towards us. Wouldn’t it be ideal to not actually care when other people seek to injure us with their negative judgment? It’s nice to think that when other people find flaws in us that it is merely a projection of their own need to protect themselves and nothing more, even if the assertion is accurate.

  Fear of being judged is a roadblock to accountability. Acceptance of deserved judgment is part of the accountability process.

  Imagine you are in a hurry to get to work. As you pull into the parking lot you accidentally ding the passenger side door of your co-worker’s brand-new minivan. This co-worker already doesn’t like you, so this will not be an easy fix. You go inside your building and you locate your co-worker and you tell her you’ve just dinged her minivan. She leaps from her chair and rushes outside to survey the damage. You’re already feeling she’s being overly dramatic and are feeling regret for even pointing out the damage to her. You could have just parked somewhere else and not said anything. No big deal, right? No one else would know. Only you. You would know. You would know, and at a subconscious level, you wouldn’t appreciate it if someone dinged your car and then didn’t tell you about it. She sees the damage and snarls at you, “I suppose you’ve got insurance to fix this?” “My deductible is more than what it would cost to fix the damage. If you will take it to your body shop have them send me the bill, I could pick you up and drop you off while your car is in the shop.” “Well that’s not going to help me pick my kids up from day care. You don’t have room in your car to do that.” “I tell you what, go to the body shop ask them if they have a loaner vehicle. If they don’t, let me know and I’ll rent you a vehicle while yours is in the shop.” “Whatever.”

  Have you ever tried to fix a situation with someone and, no matter what you did or how hard you tried, it never seems to be enough? Sometimes, people don’t want others to get out of their obligation to them. Sometimes people fester in their own drama as a need to magnify their own sense of victimhood. It happens. You still need to be accountable, regardless of your co-worker’s response to you. You dinged the car and therefore you are responsible. You may not always get a positive outcome, but you must do the right thing for your own well-being.

  When we accept accountability for our errors, we can’t help but grow and heal from the experience, despite a negative response from others.

  A crucial aspect of accountability is understanding how it creates the foundation for learning to recognize when we need to change our ways. When we learn to be accountable, we are sensitive to our behaviors in the future and how to prevent the manifestation of situations that would need to be mitigated. The scenario above would most likely encourage you to slow down when driving through the parking lot at work, don’t you think?

  We know that we are accountable, so we are careful about what we do in ways that hold space for us to be careful and compassionate, not just to others, but to ourselves as well. Often, accountability involves other people. When we hurt someone that we are supposed to love, it can be emotionally excruciating to conclude that we caused harm to that person. The shame we feel in these situations is a weight that many of us can’t imagine. Many times, we construct a delusion as a measure to distract us from being accountable and accepting responsibility for our behavior to avoid this feeling of shame. But, as we do this, we only magnify the error.

  Imagine you’re at your spouse’s holiday office party and you drink too much. Your spouse’s boss comes up to chat about the upcoming new year and to ask you about your new house you’re building. However, you decide to make fun of his tie and then ask him if his wife ever found out that he was sleeping with his secretary. Your spouse is horrified. “What?? I was just kidding!” You were, after all, quite inebriated and thought that it would be funny to insinuate that your spouse’s boss was having an affair with his secretary. Your spouse turns to you and says “That’s it. We are going home.” The next day, you remember your comment and apologize to your spouse profusely. She/he is mortified that you would do something like that. You offer to call the boss and apologize but she/he won’t hear of it. You feel ashamed and defensive. She/he doesn’t need to be THAT harsh does she/he? “It was a party. Everyone was drinking” You try to minimize and devalue the damage your words caused. You can see that your spouse is crying and won’t speak to you. Your shame is overwhelming.

  How would you handle a situation like this? What is it about this situation that makes you accountable for how your spouse feels? How do you think your spouse feels when you invalidate her/his emotional response to your actions?

  Do you see how our own emotional response to our shame spirals downward when we are faced with the inevitability of accepting responsibility for our actions? Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you won’t occasionally hurt them. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being a human being. However, the bigger insult comes from the denial of accountability in these situations. Not only do you deny the responsibility of your actions, but you further injure the one you initially hurt through invalidating their emotional response. “You’re over-reacting.”

  “It wasn’t that big of a deal.” “Your boss was probably drunk too. I doubt he will remember.”

  Being accountable means taking ownership of, both intended and unintended, behaviors. Just because a person hits your car on accident doesn’t mean they are less responsible for the error. The same goes with our behaviors and how they affect those around us. You may not have intended to cause harm, but you are responsible just the same and, thus, deserve the opportunity to right the error.

  So, we all know that we need to accept responsibility but that doesn’t mean that we actually do it. So, instead of focusing this chapter on the nuances of accountability, let’s talk about the benefits of accountability and how it affects our relationships with other people. By doing this, we learn how to understand how profound these influences are and, as a result, we can be easier on ourselves and not be so hard and judgmental when we look inward.

  Recently, I have had the ability to identify my thinking errors, as well as how those errors in behaviors have affected my own relationships. Of course, I believe I am a good person, however my behavior through my own triggers and emotional responses have, at times, been my reasoning for poor and or otherwise harmful behaviors.

  My experiences as a child, while adverse at times, cultivated in me a belief about myself that was neither conducive towards a responsible atti
tude nor was it functional in a healthy relationship. Had I not embarked on this journey of growth, I would probably still be engaging in a lot of those behaviors today. However, I am here to say that I have made many mistakes that have hurt other people and I have treated people that I love with bitterness and resentment and hostility undeservedly. I hold myself accountable because I deserve to be a better person and I deserve good people in my life and those good people deserve the best possible version of me. I am the only person who can do this work, just as you, the reader, are the only person who can do the work in your life, too. No matter what adverse conditions you grew up in and no matter who harmed you or who convinced you that you are a “bad person” (you’re not by the way) and unworthy, know this: anything that you attribute to yourself as adverse is an excuse to avoid accountability in your life and, if you avoid accountability, you avoid happiness and you avoid joy and you avoid peace in your spirit and heart. You deserve all these things simply because you’re here.