There’s a particular kind of shame that only arrives when you start to see your past clearly—not through judgment, but through deeper awareness. And lately, that’s what I’ve been sitting with.

The realization that I’ve often tried to help people not out of arrogance, but out of a deep need to feel like my suffering meant something. That if I could just fix someone, maybe I’d feel useful. Maybe I’d feel worthy. Maybe all the pain I’ve been through would be justified.

But what I see now—what hurts the most—is how often that kind of unconscious helping landed the wrong way.

Like the time I tried to offer support to someone who was clearly struggling, and instead of simply being with her, I gave a version of my solution. She was a mother of two with no rest, no real break, and here I was, a part-time parent suggesting how I managed. I can see now that what she probably needed was to just be heard. Not fixed. Not offered a pathway. Just witnessed.

And I missed that moment.

That stings. It makes me want to disappear. It floods me with embarrassment. But I’m trying to stay. To not turn away from the parts of me that meant well but acted from fear, or a longing to feel like I matter.

I think I wore my pain like armor—transforming it into insight, sharing it freely, hoping it would help someone else. And sometimes it did. But sometimes, it pushed people away. Especially the ones who didn’t want to be fixed. The ones who were already whole, already figuring it out, who maybe sensed my quiet desperation beneath the wisdom I offered.

What’s hard is realizing that those were often the people I most wanted closeness with. And my unconscious attempts to help may have created the very space I feared.

But here’s the new truth I’m starting to let in:

I don’t need to wear my pain on my sleeve to be seen.
I don’t need to prove I’ve learned something from it.
I don’t need to make every moment meaningful.

It’s enough to be meaningful by simply being present.

And if I find myself wanting to speak, to guide, to fix—I can pause. I can breathe. I can trust that the other person is already on a path of their own, and they don’t need me to rescue them. They need me to respect them.

That shift—from fixing to presence—is exhausting at first. It requires catching old patterns in real time. It requires sitting with my own discomfort and not outsourcing it to someone else’s growth.

But it’s also freeing.

Because when I’m no longer responsible for everyone else’s healing, I finally have space to tend to my own.

And maybe, just maybe, I can start to build a sense of self-worth that isn’t tied to how helpful I am. A life that’s meaningful not because of how much I’ve suffered, but because of how gently I can now show up—for myself, and for others.

Even quietly.

Even without answers.

Even when all I say is: “Yeah… me too.”