I love this. Today I was talking about something my aunt said to me in my early 20’s that really chilled me out, and that thing was “I have good news for you…you’re not that important”.
The comment was in response to me having an emotional breakdown because, at the time, I was a young adult, barely out of my teen years, and my mom was dying. I truly felt it was my fault that mom was being ravaged by disease and that it was happening in a horrifically sad way. I thought if I was doing a better job of coming over/talking to doctors/researching treatments/praying/literally anything and everything to make it, somehow, all right, then it would all go away and she would be cured; I wouldn’t feel so guilty and some of my anguish of watching mom die and the fear of judgment from my family (and the constant judgment from myself!) would be lifted. To me, I wasn’t doing enough, and that's why she was suffering.
But my aunt let me know, hey, you’re not important or powerful enough in this world to have a) everyone thinking *only* of how disappointed they are in me, b) I don't have demi-god powers necessary be able to do these insanely hard tasks and c) no one hates you, you aren’t important enough to have everyone on the planet hate you, and you aren’t ruining everything. That advice…really helped.
This article sounds a lot like her sage advice. Thank you for writing.
