Guilty For Not Wanting to Feel Guilty
My family (parents/sibilings) are planning this awesome adventure to Africa in a few months and I am not going. I’m working on not letting guilt into my decision. It is funny how easily that feeling creeps up on us. I feel guilty because when the trip was first planned for April of 2020 I was so excited about the opportunity. I feel guilty because after the world changed and travel has become something different, I don’t want to travel out of the US without my husband and my kids going with me. I feel guilty because they have never set a date and purchased tickets because I am not going and they have been so sweet and concerned with trying to find a time that I can go. I feel guilty because I am selfish in my decisions for not going.
What good does guilt do us anyway? It is an awful energy that we tend to store around experiences or lessons in life. It’s an energy that takes a small grain of regret, fear, or apprehension and festers it into a very unhealthy ball of untreated negative energies. These small emotions could be real or imaginary, but they can still cause the situation to become bigger or harder to handle.
The truth of the matter is that this trip is not in my highest good at this time. In a world based on truth, this would be the only explanation I should ever have to give on why I am not going. I feel it in my gut that this is not where I need to be or where I need to go at this time. These feelings are something I know I cannot ignore, but they are almost impossible to explain. The guilt came in when these explanations weren’t enough and I felt I had to “give” other reasons.
I can come up with thousands of other reasons to explain my decisions but even those will mean more to me than to anyone else. For example, my daughter is starting her freshman year of high school. So when they wanted to plan the trip for the beginning of August, I told them to go without me that I wanted to be here for Georgia’s list of firsts. When they wanted to go in October, I told them to go without me because Case turns 11 in October and I don’t want to miss his birthday. When they wanted to go in November, I told them to go without me because with the holidays coming up I would have a hard time balancing work with travel.
Work is always everyones go to excuse for missing family events…..even if it is a truth and not an excuse it will be seen as an excuse. As I mentioned in several other stories, we own several companies. My favorite company is our chemical company that I run and maintain. My husbands focus company is the butcher shop that he helps run and maintain. Now since my husband wasn’t part of the initial trip, it sounds easy to say “Well James can just handle it while you are gone”. To be honest, I only work 2–3 days a week to keep and maintain the chemical company. It doesn’t seem like that would add too much to his plate, right? Well, I’m really good at what I do and we would have to find time to show him how to do all the little things I do and then I would be out of the country and he wouldn’t be able to call if he had questions. Wow, that sounds awful and I’m debating erasing this part. My husband does a million things that I physically or mentally could never do, my little things do not match up to “something he can’t do”, but they are mine and I am selfish and don’t want him to do them! Whew! I said it out loud….no more guilt needed on why I don’t want him to do my job….man that feels good! Again that truth is a perfectly legit reason to me, it is my job and I love it so you can’t do it!
In writing this, I have just learned that putting the words out there (even if no one reads or hears them) was a great way to release the negative guilt energy around why James can’t handle it all on his own. Truth is he could easily handle it all on his own, but I don’t want him to!! So the truth around Georgia starting school is that she doesn’t need her mommy to walk her to her first class, but her mommy sure wants to be here when she gets home to tell me all about it! The truth around Case’s birthday isn’t that he needs his mommy there for the party, but his mommy sure wants to be there to decorate and bake the cake and celebrate him!
All of this to say that in being selfish, I am choosing to do what is in my highest good and not letting anyone persuade me to go against my gut feelings. I do know I am giving up a once in a life time trip to Africa with my family that I love. The guilt around telling them that I wasn’t going was a hard pill to swallow over the last year of trying to plan. If instead of holding onto that guilt, if I would have been open that nothing could change my mind, they could have already been and be back. That is the only selfish part I have to feel guilty about and now I am letting that guilt go and replacing it with love. Love for myself, love for putting myself first and love for my family to not miss out on an adventure just because I choose not to go. So I replaced all that guilt with love and already feel lighter. I hope if they read this that will let that love in and know why I made the choices that I did.
So what do you do to release the guilt? How would you have told your family if you were in my place? Would you feel obligated to go? Even a year ago, I would have ignored this feeling and gone out of obligation . How would me going out of obligation effected everyone else’s trip?
