Stop The Sorrys
4 minute read
“I’m so sorry for my delay in getting back to you”. Out of interest I searched in my sent emails and found 71 emails where I’d written that line over the course of this summer alone. That’s a lot of sorry. That’s a lot of me feeling on the back foot. That’s a lot of me feeling I’d let people down, a lot of me worrying had I lost an opportunity, or missed a vital business deadline.
Then I also looked through Instagram and WhatsApp messages where I mirrored similar sentiments to my friends too. And to people I don’t know who were reaching out to me in DM’s. Even typing the line up there in this article feels familiar, there’s a sort of muscle memory to it.
It was becoming a part of me, this apologising, this back-footed feeling. This feeling of missing all the marks I felt I should be hitting. Often my next words were something about life being busy, about solo-parenting and having the kids around me all summer, being focussed on my mother’s chemo and father’s upcoming heart operation, on trying to run a new business amongst all that - plus a pandemic. I was saying sorry for all that! What was wrong with me? That’s not just life being busy - that stuff IS LIFE.
And to top off the pressure of those things, I was admitting to some sort of (self) perceived failure by tardy communication. And frankly, it sucked. All that negative self-talk gets in on you.
I spoke about it this past week on my Instagram Stories and of how I was deciding to stop apologising for myself all the time, of how I doubted (which I do) that men spend their energy saying they are sorry for the time it took them to return a mail, and so I am deciding to take a new tack. The response back to me was huge. It hit a nerve in a big way - it appears we’re all at it. People-pleasing is strong in Gen X.
Now, apologising for something we’ve done wrong, be it consciously or unconsciously, is an important part of being a kind and aware person. It is mannerly. It is respectful. The best apologies are swift and succinct. There is a piece of advice that circles around the world of media training that advises for the instances when you fuck up, as you will, to “tell it all, tell it first and tell it yourself”. The same can be said for apologies. Just say you’re sorry. There is no need to endlessly flagellate and humiliate oneself out of some form of embarrassment or shame. Equally, you shouldn’t do the ostrich with your head in the cool darkness of the sand hoping the mess you created blows over you on the heated surface above you. It won’t.
If you make a real mistake, say you are sorry. Admit your mistake, ask for forgiveness and move the hell on. Nobody else gets the right to continually shame you, so why do it to yourself?
In the messages and chats I had with followers on the topic, a myriad of supposed misdemeanours were mentioned as moments when women frequently apologise for themselves. And they make a stark case. Makeup artist Fiona Harrison told me, “ I have clients every day in the chair, apologising constantly and being critical of themselves - sorry my skin is bad, sorry my eyebrows are terrible, sorry my eyes water and on and on and on… Now I’m asking them to tell me something they love about themselves when we start the appointment”.
Fiona went on to say, “A lot find it so hard to answer the what they love about themselves question. I really see how hard we are on ourselves when we really should be talking to ourselves the same way we talk to someone we love with all our heart”.
And isn’t she right? How can we feel we support ourselves if we’re constantly saying sorry for being ourselves?
I recognise it myself. I say it in beauty appointments too. At the hairdresser, ‘ sorry, the greys have grown out so much’, when getting a bikini wax; ‘sorry, I missed a few appointments, it’s like a jungle down there’...
I’ve said sorry in situations where I shouldn’t. I’ve said sorry sometimes to make conversations end. To dissipate a dispute. To renew an even keel.
And every single time I do it I deny myself. Unknowingly (or sometimes knowingly), I refuse to advocate for myself. I am untrue to myself. Maybe you do it too, do you?
All of which leads me back to the daily sorry’s we’ve been saying in entirely disproportionate moments. If there was a grade to apologising, returning an email a little late would probably not feature in any list. It’s a little thing that deserves a large reframing.
Instead of “I’m so sorry for the delay” (note the ‘so’ - could I flagellate any more!), I am now going to say “Thank you for your patience” and carry on with what I’m saying. I have also added an auto-responder to my email acknowledging my receipt of it and saying I will respond over the next couple of days. It starts with thank you for getting in touch - not a sorry in sight.
Shifting shame to gratitude.
Flipping the narrative that way displays confidence and clarity, and is far better for my self-esteem. It does wonders for that other bullshit narrative - Imposter Syndrome - too. One of the Heyday members wrote a great comment under a piece we have here about Imposter Syndrome and mentioned that we’ve all managed to self-diagnose ourselves with it of late. Well, I propose undiagnosing ourselves of it. We have autonomy. We don’t need permission - it’s our inbox, our workday, our life.
We all have personal priorities other than those listed in our emails. We have full, adult lives with lots of facets. Work does not define us, nor does dry skin, or watery eyes, or overgrown bikini lines. You have a life. Just live it. Don’t apologise for it.
Ellie Balfe, August 2021
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