Your Mistakes Are Not Your Identity

For a long time, I let my mistakes introduce me.

I thought if I'd made poor choices, then I must be a bad person. I know now that isn't true.

There was a time in my life when I genuinely didn't care what happened to me. After losing a true love to suicide, I experienced a pain I didn't think a person could survive. Nothing seemed like it could hurt more than that.

So I stopped protecting myself. I made choices that chipped away at my self-respect. Sometimes I think I was punishing myself. Sometimes I think I was trying to outrun grief. Sometimes I think I was searching for pain because pain was the only thing that still felt familiar.

Looking back now, I wonder if those choices were less about who I was and more about what I was carrying.

I don't think I was ever a bad person. I think I was carrying more pain than I knew what to do with.

And yet, through all of it, one thing never changed…

My heart.

No matter how much I was hurting, I still wanted people around me to feel loved. I was still the person checking in on friends, making sure everyone else was okay, believing in people, giving second chances, and loving with everything I had.

Even when I became a stranger to the people I loved most, the kindness in me never disappeared. I had simply forgotten to turn that same kindness towards myself.

Being honest about my past is how I finally discovered who I really am.

Today, I don't hide from my mistakes. I own them. I learn from them. But I no longer confuse them with my identity.

For years, I believed my mistakes defined me. Sometimes it even felt like other people believed they did too. But their opinion of me was never the truth of who I was.

Now I know my mistakes don't define me.

They're something I carry with responsibility.

Not something I become.

So, to the beautiful person reading this...

Don't sit in your mistakes for too long.

Take responsibility for them. Learn from them. Apologise when you need to. Make things right where you can. Then keep living.

Your mistakes deserve accountability, but they don't deserve your whole identity.

Be honest about who you are. You might just discover the person you've been looking for has been there all along.

Love, Claire 🤍

Love yourself more. Listen to your body. She Knows. 🤍

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