The Mistakes That Keep Us Awake

When Accountability Becomes Punishment

It was 5:00am in the morning. The house was finally quiet.

I had just breastfed my daughter back to sleep. The sink, which had been full of dirty dishes earlier, was now sparkling clean. I had packed the leftovers from dinner into the fridge. I had loaded the last load of laundry into the washing machine. I had pumped water into the tank and made sure we had plenty. I had put my daughter's toys back in their places. I made my husbands breakfast and packed his lunch.

Then I took a shower.

My hands were still cold from touching all that water when I slipped into bed. But the blankets were warm, and for the first time that day, there was nothing left to do.

Except sleep.

But sleep didn't come.

Instead, my mind wandered back years.

I remembered a friendship.

Someone I cared about had trusted me with something deeply personal. Around the same time, another friend had shared something similar with me. One afternoon, while we were all having lunch together, I connected their stories out loud.

I thought I was helping.

I thought I was creating an opportunity for two people who shared a similar experience to find one another and perhaps support each other.

But I wasn't.

I had taken something that had been entrusted to me and made it public without their permission. I had taken away their choice about when, how, and with whom they wanted to share something so vulnerable.

Today, I can see that clearly.

At the time, I couldn't.

And that realization has stayed with me.

I never really had the opportunity to apologize properly. Not because I didn't want to, but because life carried us in different directions and eventually the friendship ended.

Still, there are some mistakes that remain with us long after the circumstances have changed.

As I lay there in the quiet, I thought about how interesting regret is.

It doesn't usually show up when we're busy.

It waits.

It waits for the laundry to be done. The dishes to be washed. The baby to be asleep. The house to be still.

And then, in the very moment when we're finally supposed to rest, our minds sometimes bring us the things we wish we had done differently.

I have had nights like this before.

But I've learned something important about regret: it can either become a lesson or become a prison.

For a long time after that friendship ended, I felt like I needed to remove myself from friendships altogether. I felt that I wasn't yet deserving of them. I had hurt someone, even though I had not intended to, and I didn't trust myself enough to believe that I was ready to be a good friend.

So I stepped away.

I spent years becoming more self-aware. I learned to listen more carefully. I learned that being well-intentioned does not automatically make me safe. I learned to pay attention to what people are actually saying rather than rushing to solve, fix, connect or explain.

Most importantly, I learned to be present.

In many ways, that period of my life shaped the person I am today.

It eventually guided me into the work I do now. As a coach, I sit with people as they navigate their emotions, their relationships, their trauma, their identities and their healing. I have to listen. I have to remain present. I have to create space for people to tell the truth about their experiences without immediately trying to defend myself or make their feelings easier for me to hear.

My healing has taught me something I wasn't expecting:

I am just as capable of hurting someone as someone else is capable of hurting me.

That is a difficult thing to accept.

We like to believe that because we are good people, we cannot be harmful. Because we didn't intend to hurt someone, we should be exempt from the consequences of our actions.

But adulthood has taught me otherwise.

Sometimes we hurt people because we are unaware.

Sometimes we are inconsiderate.

Sometimes we are naïve.

Sometimes we're so consumed by our own insecurities, needs or experiences that we don't notice what someone else is experiencing.

Sometimes we simply don't know what we don't know.

And sometimes, despite having good intentions, we get it wrong.

The absence of malicious intent does not erase impact.

I have had to become comfortable with that truth.

I want to be someone who can hear, "You hurt me," without immediately needing to explain why I didn't mean to.

I want to be able to listen.

I want to be accountable.

I want to apologize when an apology is warranted.

And where it is possible, I want to repair what I've damaged.

If that friend ever came to me today and told me how that moment affected her, I would want to hear her. I would want to understand the impact of what I did. I would want to give her the space I wasn't capable of giving her back then.

That is what growth looks like to me.

But healing has also taught me something else.

Accountability is not the same thing as punishment.

Accountability has a purpose.

It asks us to tell the truth.

To listen.

To take responsibility.

To make amends where possible.

To change our behavior.

To become more aware.

To do better.

Punishment, however, can have no finish line.

And this is something I've had to learn in some of my relationships.

I have been in situations where I could tell that someone was hurt by something I had done, but instead of coming to me to talk about it, the hurt seemed to manifest through criticism, subtle disrespect, comments that chipped away at my confidence, or behaviors that made me feel as though I was still being punished for something that had happened years before.

For a long time, I thought that because I had hurt someone, I should simply take it.

I thought, "I did something wrong. They're angry. I should let them be angry."

And I understand that people need space to feel what they feel.

But eventually I had to ask myself:

At what point does accountability end and punishment begin?

Who decides when someone has been punished enough?

Who decides when the debt has been paid?

And what happens when the hurt has grown far beyond the original offense?

If the only way a relationship can continue is for one person to continually prove their remorse while the other person continually finds new ways to make them pay, that isn't repair.

That is a relationship built around debt.

I am willing to be held accountable.

I am not willing to be punished forever.

There is a difference.

If someone I have hurt wants to tell me how I've hurt them, I want to listen.

If they want to have an honest conversation about what happened, I am open to that.

If there is something I need to apologize for, I want to apologize.

If there is something I need to change, I want to change.

If there is a possibility of repairing the relationship, I am willing to explore that.

But I cannot participate in a relationship where the only available form of communication is covert punishment.

And sometimes, the healthiest thing I can do is step away.

Not because I believe I am blameless.

Not because I think the other person has no right to be hurt.

And certainly not because I think I am above accountability.

I step away because I have learned that accountability does not require self-abandonment.

I've also seen this dynamic through my coaching work.

I've sat with people who are carrying immense guilt over ways they have hurt others. I've also sat with people carrying deep resentment toward those who have hurt them.

And I've noticed how unresolved hurt can sometimes trap both people.

The person who caused the hurt may remain desperate for another chance to prove that they've changed. They stay because they hope that one day they will finally be forgiven.

The person who was hurt may struggle to trust again, but also struggle to let go.

So the relationship becomes a strange kind of prison.

One person keeps saying, "Look at what you did to me."

The other keeps saying, "I'm sorry. Please give me a chance to make it right."

But neither person is actually free.

I've learned that not every relationship can be repaired.

Sometimes the person who hurt you genuinely changes, but you still don't feel safe enough to continue the relationship.

Sometimes the person you've hurt genuinely regrets what they did, but you no longer want them in your life.

And sometimes both people need to accept that the relationship has reached its natural end.

That doesn't mean the hurt wasn't real.

It doesn't mean the remorse wasn't real.

It means that repair and reconciliation are not always the same thing.

Repair requires honesty from both sides.

It requires vulnerability.

It requires a willingness to move toward one another rather than continually positioning one person as the villain and the other as the judge.

And sometimes, if that willingness doesn't exist, the kindest thing both people can do is let go.

I think that is one of the hardest lessons of healing:

You can acknowledge that you hurt someone without making yourself responsible for their entire emotional life afterward.

You can regret what you did without believing that you are permanently a bad person.

You can apologize without demanding forgiveness.

You can offer repair without demanding reconciliation.

And you can accept accountability without volunteering to be mistreated.

I think about that friend sometimes.

I hope she is well.

I hope she has built a beautiful life.

And if our paths ever cross again, I hope I am able to meet her as the woman I have become rather than the girl who made that mistake.

I don't know whether she was ever angry with me.

I don't know whether that moment stayed with her in the way it stayed with me.

And I don't need to create a story about what she feels.

What I do know is that the mistake changed me.

It taught me to be more careful with people's vulnerability.

It taught me that being helpful isn't always the same as being safe.

It taught me to listen before I connect, fix, advise or intervene.

And it taught me that sometimes the most loving thing we can do with someone's story is simply hold it.

That is the kind of lesson I want to carry into every friendship I make from here.

I want to make people feel seen.

I want to make people feel safe.

I want to be someone who can receive difficult truths without becoming defensive.

And I want to be surrounded by people who can offer me that same grace while still holding me accountable.

Because I don't want relationships where nobody ever gets anything wrong.

I want relationships where we can get things wrong and still tell the truth.

Where we can say, "That hurt me."

Where the other person can say, "I understand. I'm sorry."

Where we can ask, "How do we repair this?"

And where both people are allowed to grow beyond the worst thing they have ever done to each other.

That, to me, is the difference between accountability and punishment.

Accountability says:

You did something wrong. Look at it. Learn from it. Make it right where you can. Become different.

Punishment says:

You did something wrong. And you will always owe me for it.

I don't want to live on either side of that equation.

I don't want to spend my life punishing people who have hurt me.

And I don't want to spend my life being punished for the person I used to be.

I want to learn.

I want to repair where repair is possible.

I want to walk away where it isn't.

And I want to keep becoming someone who can love people without abandoning myself in the process.

Maybe that is what my mind was trying to tell me at 5:00 in the morning.

Not that I needed to forget what I had done.

Not that I needed to absolve myself.

But that I had already learned the lesson.

The question was no longer, "How do I punish myself for the person I was?"

It was:

"How do I continue becoming the person I now know I can be?"