On Apologies

I am loving Lindsey Mackereth's Substack blog, Lindsey Mack's Complexity Edge, about living well as neurocomplex people. Here's her take on apologizing that feels so real and useful:

Name what happened without narrating your intentions first. “That comment at dinner was sharp and it landed on you specifically, I’m sorry” does more work than five minutes of context about your nervous system. Let the other person’s reaction be real without treating it as a verdict on your worth. Then stop. No spiral, no over-correction into three weeks of hyper-agreeableness to prove you’re still good. One clean acknowledgment, then back to living like a person who’s allowed to have made a mistake.

Repair, done well, is proof that unmasking and consideration aren’t opposites. You get to keep both: the honesty that got you here, and the accountability that lets you stay in relationship with people once you’ve said the honest thing. (bold in original)

To read the rest of Mackereth's article, you'll have to get a gift subscription to her blog (or go ahead and pay for it -- her stuff is so good). It's here.

And then there's this 8 minute TED Talk by Eve Ensler, "The Profound Power of an Authentic Apology." Ensler offers step by step instructions. Be forewarned -- it is an intense 8 minutes, coming out of her experience as an incest survivor and grappling with what she would have needed from her father to heal. I found it to be powerful, useful, gut wrenching, and beautiful. Watch it here.