I don’t like feeling guilty.
Yet it’s amazing how quickly guilt can find me. It appears when I disappoint someone, when I set a boundary, when I choose my own needs, or when I simply can’t make another person feel better.
I’m beginning to think guilt is my default emotion.
Right now, I feel guilty about this: I wonder if by putting my mom into personal care when I did, it hastened her symptoms of dementia. Would she, could she have done better longer on her own? I can logically say all the signs of cognitive decline were already there. She shouldn’t have been living on her own. She could compensate and fool others but meanwhile the delusions had already started. The little boy in the hallway at 3 am. Always 3 am – someone knocking on the door every night. Someone climbing up to the second-floor balcony and messing with her weather gauge. Her TV not working when she just couldn’t figure out the remote.
I did the right thing. I know I did. My mom, though, she can’t see she is delusional and irrational. She truly believes everyone else is wrong and she is right when she insists she’s in the wrong room and the clothes in the closet are not hers. Even when I know, intellectually, that her demands are coming from illness rather than reality, I still feel guilty when I don’t respond immediately, when I set limits, or when I simply choose my own life for a few hours.
So why the guilt? Is guilt really empathy in disguise? Is it because I feel bad for her that I couldn’t give her what she wanted, to stay in her home and live out her dying days? Why do I have to shoulder the burden of the decision when she could not come to her own reasonable conclusions?
She has a neighbor in the retirement community who talks to me about family meetings. She says she and her children meet and decide what is best for her. She abides by the decisions the group makes. How much easier that would be. The burden lifted right from my shoulders. My mom does not operate that way.
Now here we are at another crossroads. The administrators and staff have made the decision mom should be in memory care. For once it wasn’t my decision to make. I already know mom will not take it well although it is again for the best. She will no longer wonder the halls lost and will feel more secure in a limited space. There will be always people around. She won’t feel as lonely.
She won’t see it that way at all though. She will go kicking and screaming. She will continue to call me eight times a day telling me to come get her. She may even try and escape the locked doors. Do I feel guilty because she doesn’t like or agree with her circumstances? Yes. Can I help it? No. Am I making the right decisions and doing the best I can? Yes.
So here we are. It feels like guilt is imposed on me. And…I just accept it. Why, why do I accept it? I deeply feel for her. I wish all of this weren’t happening as it is. But I think I’ve moved from empathizing with her pain and circumstances to taking responsibility for fixing it.
It was always my job as far back as I can remember. I was always in charge of fixing our emotional relationship because she couldn’t or wouldn’t. As a teenager, when we fought, as mothers and daughters do, my mom would go in her bedroom and cry. My dad would come to me and say, you know how she is, why don’t you go in there and apologize. But I didn’t do anything wrong, I would say. Just go say you’re sorry, he would insist. And I would. Resentfully. There was no conversation, no resolution and never an apology in return.
As children, many of us unconsciously become emotional caretakers. We learn to read the room. We notice tension before anyone says a word. We become experts at anticipating other people’s moods, trying to soothe conflict, earn approval, or prevent disappointment. If someone we loved was upset, we quietly assumed it had something to do with us.
Over time, that childhood strategy became my adult identity.
Someone else’s distress automatically became my responsibility.
No wonder guilt arrives so quickly. It isn’t proof that I’ve done something wrong. It’s an old emotional program that has been running for decades.
As I continue walking this road with my mother, I know I won’t stop feeling empathy. I don’t want to. It is part of who I am. But I am learning that empathy and responsibility are not the same thing.
I can hopefully remain open and empathic while developing healthy boundaries. Maybe that is what healing guilt looks like. Not becoming less compassionate, but finally recognizing where my compassion ends and another person’s life begins.
And maybe guilt isn’t my enemy after all. Perhaps it is simply a messenger pointing me toward an old story that no longer serves me. A story that says I must earn love by carrying what was never mine to carry.
Maybe it’s time to write a different story.
One where love is still there, compassion is still wholehearted, but my own soul is no longer the price I pay for either.
One where I do not mistake caring with carrying.
Soulfire Woman Journal Prompts
Where in my life do I mistake empathy for responsibility?
Whose emotions do I automatically feel obligated to fix, soothe, or carry?
When I feel guilty, what am I actually feeling underneath? Is it grief, fear, helplessness, or an old belief that someone else’s happiness depends on me?
What would it feel like to remain deeply compassionate while allowing another person’s emotions to belong to them?
Finish this sentence without overthinking it:
I can love you without…
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Today’s Soulfire Inquiry: What Was Never Mine to Carry
Guilt often has a deeper story beneath it.
Together, we explore where you learned to carry what wasn’t yours, how to recognize the difference between guilt, empathy and responsibility, and what it means to love without losing yourself.
