Healing Hypocrisy and Harm

Healing has so many components. Remission is one for sure. Unfortunately so is hypocrisy. I touched briefly on remission in my last stack; this one is harder. Let me cut straight to the chase…when your “healing” is covered with hypocrisy it isn’t healing. It’s actually harm. Yep I know…some of y’all are about to check out and navigate away from this page and that’s okay. This stack probably isn’t for you anyway.

For those of you still here (regardless as to why) I want to say that last part again with power. When your healing is laden with hypocrisy, it’s actually harm. I personally don’t believe that healing and harm go together. Healing is what you do after harm. Healing looks different for a lot of people and yet, by definition, healing and harm are opposites. This means that while they co-exist, one can’t accurately be on a healing journey while also causing harm and I think people grossly underestimate how much harm is present in hypocrisy.

I’ve had hypocrisy in my own healing and it took me way too long to eradicate that. I wish someone, anyone actually, would have shared with me what I’m about to share with you because my journey may have been less arduous if so. More importantly, I would have caused less harm for sure.

Buzzwords have always been a thing and every industry and generation seems to have them. Common universal ones being tossed around today include things like gaslighting, narcissist, trigger/triggered, and no contact. I am of the opinion even the words growth and healing or healing journey have become, to a certain degree, jargon. What I don’t see being included though are the words hypocrisy or hypocrite and this is pretty harmful actually.

Lemme give you solid examples from my own life. Aww yes…Laura. My egg donor, incubator, birth giver and also known as my mother. The woman responsible for half of my existence. The woman to whom I will forever be grateful to because she chose to let me live even though other options were available.

I have a beautiful life today, one that keeps me smiling on a regular, has me in remission on some things and healed so hard I don’t clinically meet the criteria for any other mental health condition save ADHD! Am I bragging…you betcha! Remission took work and I’m better for it. I am also proud of myself for doing it.

This season of unmitigated joy hasn’t been without sorrow too. Especially when it comes to Laura. She and I have a long history of harm. Sometimes mutual harm admittedly. It’s true what they say, I think, in that hurt people hurt people. When I was hurting the most, I absolutely know that I hurt others whether I intended to or not. In fact, I know this better than anyone and can own my own mess. What I can do or have also done is take out my own trash, figuratively speaking.

How you ask? Keep reading.

Eventually I got to a point in my own healing (thank you KimZ) where I recognized that healing is for everyone on their own time and when they decide. This holds true even when we want someone to heal on our time, or when someone we care about recognizes they have things to heal from and still refuses to do the work. KimZ taught me that no response is in fact a response and I don’t need to attend every conflict I’m invited to. She taught me that position doesn’t require proximity, unless I choose to allow it, and so much more.

Initially I didn’t like her too much because she made me work. If I added it all up, I’d bet I’ve spent half my life in therapy, so I wasn’t unaccustomed to it being work. I know, I know! As I said, I come from a long line of trauma. I say that to say, despite all of that prior therapy, I personally believe I healed the most, grew the most, processed the most, overcame the most and well just did all the best things therapy can do for someone with KimZ. I came out of our time together a new and improved version of me with tools she assured me I was using well. Then, much to my dismay, she fired me…lol. Okay not really but terminating care was her idea not mine. She saw something in me that took me a lot longer to realize in myself and I am grateful she saw the diamond in my rough. I reluctantly accepted her decision after she consoled me by offering to hold space for some “check-in” sessions should I need them down the road.

It was about a year before I called KimZ to cash in on those sessions. Here we go again…more Mama Trauma (this will be a whole separate stack eventually btw).

Laura was the catalyst in my middle daughter seeking out a protection order against me. She wrote a 3 page statement in support of my daughter too. In it, she outlined something that took place between us more than 30 years ago in a way that would lead the unaware to assume it was recent. Even the Judge saw through it. She stated something in open court (no I don’t care enough to get the transcripts to quote her verbatim) that basically amounted to if Laura and my former roommate would have just minded their business and not stirred the pot she didn’t think my daughter and I would have ever been in her courtroom. Admittedly my mouth is slick when I’m angry or frustrated and the things I said when angry and venting to folks I believed to be safe people were concerning to the the judge and so the order was granted. TBH…I still think that entire thing was an abuse of the court because I was voluntarily staying away from my daughter as she requested, but we’re not here to talk about that today.

In response to Laura’s diabolical conduct, I did nothing. I didn’t text, didn’t email, I didn’t call, I didn’t pull up at her house, I didn’t confront her at all. I didn’t have to. I didn’t need her to admit to what I already knew she did; she was the only one who could have set the series of events that unfolded into motion. I declined the invitation to the conflict and allowed no response to be my only response. That was May of 2023. Laura has never reached out since.

When birthdays and holidays came, she was silent. When her brother (one of my most favorite humans) had a cancer diagnosis and was given two years to live in December of 2024, she was silent. When my father’s brother died and I was a grieving mess at the beginning of last year, instead of being a help, she caused more harm.

This stage of my healing has allowed me to love Laura right where she’s at and ALSO love myself too. Enough to hold what KimZ and I referred to as the grace space. At any point in the future that Laura sees a therapist, does some work and desires a therapeutic reconciliation I will welcome that. I healed…she can too. To think or move differently is just hypocrisy in motion and that causes so much harm.

When you go through the effort to heal complete with saying “I’m not the same girl I used to be” or its equivalent but then imply others can’t, don’t or haven’t healed also, it is hypocrisy. When you are proud of yourself for not being the same girl you used to be for whatever reason while refusing to hold space for the idea that others may not be the same version of themselves you believe them to be or have known previously, it’s hypocrisy.

When you don’t want to be judged for the versions of you that were unhealed or unhealthy but judge others based on the same thing it is…you guessed it…hypocrisy. When you refuse to hold grace space for people you claim to love, it’s also hypocrisy. I could go on.

When we have truly healed and move from a space of healing it allows us to recognize that we aren’t any different or better than anyone else. If we can do it…they can too. EVEN if they don’t do as fast as we’d like them to.

No part of my most recent healing journey with KimZ has ever had me feeling like my mom, my daughters, my son, my grandkids, my uncles, my sister, my brothers, my nieces, my nephews or whomever can’t heal too. My healing journey instead allows me to hold a grace space for all those I love. Laura included.

While I won’t allow her proximity to me as long as she’s intentionally causing harm, were she to ever need me, I’d be there. No questions asked. I have healed from so much and am actively healing from so much more. I am no more or no less capable of doing so than the next person. If I can do it, anyone can. Laura included. I am hopeful for the day that she chooses to do so because I’d like us to meet in healing the way we’ve previously met in harm.

Hypocrisy in healing causes harm because relationships remain shattered, innocent children lose out on having additional people in their life to love them, families remain divided, secrets go to graves; love is in short supply, if even present at all.

Love, like air or faith or hope or so many other things can’t be seen only felt or experienced and it isn’t found where hypocrisy abounds. My grand daughter tells me she loves me often but it’s not like she can pour me a cup of her love or put it on a shelf for me to experience at will. No, because love isn’t what she says; it’s what she does. It’s how she smiles when she sees me, hugs me, wants to spend time with me, colors me pictures for my walls (and yes sometimes on my walls). It’s everything she does BECAUSE she loves me. I don’t see her love for me; I see the results of it. I am of the opinion that you cannot love someone you refuse to hold space for and that might need to be a topic of another stack entirely.

No part of my ability to love someone is rooted in division because love, when done correctly, multiplies never divides. BB is my 10th grandbaby; loving him with all of me has done nothing to prevent me from loving the first with all of me too. Lemme close with both a call to action and a challenge to all of you anywhere along this thing called healing.

First, the challenge:

To anyone who has ever viewed their own reflection and said or thought, “Wow I am so glad I’m not who I used to be,” or any equivalent variation, I challenge you to get really honest with that reflection. Ask yourself if you are, in fact, being hypocritical. I challenge you to hold space for the idea that if you can and did heal or are healing, others can too and meet people with the same grace and energy you want people to give you. I challenge you step way outside yourself and give others the same opportunities to be met in their healing that you have enjoyed. This is especially important when it comes to the hurt people who have hurt you. If you aren’t the same person you were x amount of time ago, I challenge you to be brave and hold space for the fact that they probably aren’t either. Whoever “they” might be. You might be pleasantly surprised if you do!

The call to action:

To the person who has yet to take the first step down the path, to the person who may have had to turn around and start over several times, to the person so far down the path they can no longer see how it started, to the person who is so far down that the beginning and the end remain out of sight, to the person who came to what they believed to be the end of the road only to discover it continues further than the eyes can see…you, my love, are not a tree. You can CHOOSE to move. You don’t have to go fast either, as long as you’re moving in the right direction. Don’t take my word for it, though. Richard L. Evans, writer, speaker and theologian, said, “Your direction is more important than your speed.”

Healing is a journey and it looks different for all of us. It is also a journey all of us can take and everyone deserves the opportunity to do so if they desire to.