{"id":1178515,"date":"2025-12-22T16:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/?p=1178515"},"modified":"2025-12-22T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T17:07:52","slug":"14-things-its-time-you-forgave-yourself-for-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/heidi-priebe\/2025\/12\/14-things-its-time-you-forgave-yourself-for-2\/","title":{"rendered":"14 Things It\u2019s Time You Forgave Yourself For"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1. The big things that you changed your mind about<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The dream job you never thought you\u2019d quit. The person you didn\u2019t think you\u2019d leave. The plans you had for the future that never came to fruition because something else got in the way. Life ebbs and flows and to keep up with it we have to do the same. We have to forgive ourselves for having the self-awareness to change our minds about the really big things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The ways in which you fought through pain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The dark paths you shouldn\u2019t have gone down. The crazy things you did in the name of coping that brought about more damage than good. The things you did to keep yourself alive when you didn\u2019t know any better way. The way your survival instinct showed itself when you were too young or helpless to control it doesn\u2019t make you a bad person. It makes you a stronger, fuller person for still being around. For having found your way back to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The person you could never love properly<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The person whose words body never fit right with yours, whose thoughts weren\u2019t the ying to your yang, whose words never quite sounded right but whom you tried to love despite and because of it all. The person you tried to get it right with so hard that it felt like your heart was going to give up on beating, but who eventually had to let go. You cannot force love into existence. And letting it bloom somewhere else only makes us all freer in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Read “This Is Me Letting You Go<\/a>” for moving forward and moving on.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. The fries that you ate with your lunch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll survive this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. All the ways in which you are not enough<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The body you\u2019ll never have, the knowledge you will never acquire, the courage you\u2019ll never muster and the effort you\u2019ll never put in. You may never be brave enough or smart enough or strong enough to suit someone else\u2019s ideal but you are always going to be just perfectly you enough and the moment you realize how important that it, the sooner you can let the rest go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. The way you treated your parents when you were sixteen (Or twenty. Or thirty.)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You were awful and infuriating and insufferable and now all of those days are behind you (Unless they\u2019re not. If you are sixteen and reading this, please go hug your parents and tell them you love them). So perhaps we all grew a little sideways or backwards on the way to growing up and we said a couple things we didn\u2019t mean. Life went on. We all grew from it. And it is never too late to say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. The way you treated yourself most of your life<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Every flaw you picked apart inside the mirror. Every lie you told yourself about your limitations. Every \u201cI am not good enough\u201d thought that ever flitted through the recesses of your mind, settling into a place where it mattered. We have to forgive ourselves for not being our own best friends, our own confidants and our own biggest cheerleaders. We didn\u2019t know what a difference it would make to love ourselves, until we finally did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. The useless degree you took in college<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The world is changing, quickly. Once upon a time there really were jobs for undergraduate Philosophy majors. We just don\u2019t happen to live in that world anymore. But the cool thing about the world we do live in is that it\u2019s getting smaller every day. We have less specific career paths when we graduate but more general opportunity. You\u2019d be shocked at all the ways your \u201cuseless\u201d major still comes in handy. You won\u2019t end up where you expected but you may end up somewhere much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. The breaks that you took from life<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The semester when life got you down. The year you spent living at home. The months that you wish you could wipe from your mind as times of self-loathing and fear. We all get overwhelmed sometimes. We all forget how to deal. We need these times to re-group, to reflect, to re-create ourselves and figure out where to go next. We are stronger for having gone through these breaks, despite what they felt like at the time. We figured out how to bounce back harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. The chances you didn\u2019t take<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The places you never travelled to. The experiences you didn\u2019t have. The person you did not chase after when they decided to walk away. We have to unclasp our palms and let go of every alternate reality where we\u2019re happier, stronger, brighter because of all the things we did differently. Those universes do not exist. But ours does. And it\u2019s okay here, if we open our eyes up and let it be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11. The things you didn\u2019t say until it was too late<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cI love yous\u201d we let slide. The phone calls we didn\u2019t pick up. The messages we forgot to pass on while we still had the chance to do so. We believe that our words and intentions could have changed things, so we use our words now. We don\u2019t let our \u201cI love yous\u201d slide. We pick the phone up. And we forgive ourselves for all the times when we didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12. The disasters you didn\u2019t see coming<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Every person you should not have trusted. Every fun night out that went wrong. Every choice that in retrospect should not have been made. Except we don\u2019t live our lives in retrospect. We live them forward. And we don\u2019t get the privilege of knowing if our choices will be right or wrong before we make them. We simply have to do the best we can, try the best we can and forgive ourselves whenever we are wrong. If we\u2019re living life right we\u2019re going to be wrong a whole lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13. Whatever you still are not ready for<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Every fear that is holding you back right now. Every leap of faith you haven\u2019t yet made. Every story you\u2019re telling yourself about where you ought to be by the age that you\u2019re currently at. We\u2019re all a little not ready for life. We\u2019re all a little bit timid. We\u2019re all a little bit gunshy and we\u2019re all trying in whatever small ways we know how. Give yourself the time you need to grow. It\u2019s going to happen, just not on the timeline you think it will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14. The mistakes you haven\u2019t even made yet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Because as much as we\u2019d always like to believe that we\u2019re eternally out of the woods now, we\u2019re not. We\u2019re going to screw up again. We\u2019re going to fall down again. We\u2019re going to make more huge, inconsolable mistakes that will diminish us. And thank God. The day we stop making mistakes is the day we stop living. We just have to give ourselves the room we need to make them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way you treated yourself most of your life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114678431,"featured_media":1178519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[603229949,603198233],"tags":[],"anchortext":[],"posttemplate":[],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[219077519],"class_list":["post-1178515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mental-health","category-self-help"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-12-Woman-Walking-Beside-Horse-On-Tree-Lined-Path-Afternoon-Light.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114678431"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178520,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178515\/revisions\/1178520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1178519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178515"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=1178515"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=1178515"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=1178515"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1178515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}