Offer Yourself Mercy
SEGMENT 5 · Soften and Forgive
EPISODE 5
Offer Yourself Mercy
Mercy is grace in motion
She cried without making a sound.
She wiped her tears, powdered her face, put on her lipstick, and walked back out to the floor. Lately, she walked with a slight limp.
I was nineteen, bussing tables at a family restaurant east of Los Angeles. She was in her early sixties. She had worked there on and off for forty years, and for the last twenty, it was her second home.
The regulars asked for her section. If her tables were full, they waited. She knew their names, knew their children, opened her arms when they walked in.
If someone had stayed away too long, she would say, “I was about to send search and rescue!” Then came her laugh, husky from years of smoking.
Watching her move from table to table, it was hard to imagine she carried anything but joy.
But in the back room, where we went to eat and rest our feet, she would fall apart, put herself back together, and return to the floor ready for another hug.
That is where we became close. I had never seen anyone talk through tears the way she did, sometimes letting out a small chuckle before continuing. I could not understand how the woman crying beside me could walk back out and fill the room with laughter.
I listened, hugged her, and cried with her, understanding little but feeling how much she hurt. She would hug me back and whisper, “I don’t want to put too much on you, but I want you to get out of here while you can. While you’re still young.”
She said I reminded her of herself at nineteen. Young. Bussing tables only until she figured her life out, until she went to school, or something. She had never imagined she would still be there at sixty.
“I made the wrong choices at every turn,” she would say. Back then, she thought she had life figured out and would not listen to anyone. She was the life of the party. The pretty girl. The organizer. The one everyone turned to for comfort.
As she spoke, I could picture her young. I could see how she had been that person. The one everyone loved. The one I would have loved to befriend. And I wished she did not speak of those years only with regret. I wish I had known more about the good parts.
But I was too afraid to ask.
“No matter how much they love you,” she said of the customers, “they will still leave the table dirty for you to clean.”
I took her words literally. I saw how much care she gave the people at her tables, and how much she seemed to enjoy them. Now I wonder whether the tables she cleared each day had come to represent the life she believed she should have left behind.
As she got older, the managers got younger. They expected her to move faster and work longer hours, just as keeping up was becoming harder. The sore she had on her toe that she described as being from “too much sugar” did not help either. She didn't have health insurance, so she rationed her diabetes pills to make them last longer.
Walking hurt, but she could not afford to stay home.
So she kept coming in, trying to keep up. And when she went to the back room, she cried, feeling trapped in a life she blamed herself for.
I did not know then what diabetes could do to a body. I did not understand what having no insurance could mean. I was young and healthy, with a whole world ahead of me and little to offer her beyond a hug.
So, I cried with her in the back room and before I went to bed, I wrote her words in my diary: “I want you to get out of here while you can. While you’re still young.”
I wonder now whether she was judging her nineteen-year-old self by everything she had learned since. And there I was, nineteen, listening as she tried to steer me away from the regrets she carried.
Now, whenever I catch myself thinking, I wish I had done this earlier, I remember her. I say to myself, I did my best with what I knew.
I tell this story because “I wish I had” comes up so often in our conversations. Think about a choice you still return to, wishing you had made it differently.
You look at a bill and wish you had saved more. You stay in a job you cannot afford to leave and think about the choices that brought you there. You see someone doing the work you once dreamed of and remember the application you never sent. Or you receive a diagnosis and find yourself questioning how you cared for your body.
We replay what we cannot undo while living with what is difficult now. And many times we blame ourselves for more than we could have controlled.
Dont' get me wrong, the feeling of being trapped is real.
When you cannot see how things could change, regret can deepen that hopelessness. I wish I had chosen differently becomes This is all my fault.
In the last episode, we explored what it means to step off the timeline and begin living while we heal. Here, we ask how we treat ourselves when the life we are living feels impossible to change.
Tomorrow may bring the same job, the same bills, the same difficulties. We may not know how to move forward. Yet we add blame to what is already hard to carry. We put ourselves on trial, returning to the same evidence every day.
The Trial Within
Inside many of us, there is a courtroom that never closes.
You are the lawyer bringing the charges.
You should have saved more.
You should have gone back to school.
You should have left when you had the chance.
You are the witness, called to remember.
The money you spent.
The application you never sent.
The morning you almost left, then put on your work clothes and went back.
The times you pushed through when your body needed rest.
You are the jury with an incomplete story.
You hear about the money spent, but not the family it fed.
The application never sent, but not the doubts you carried.
The job you stayed in, but not the bills that made leaving feel impossible.
And you are the judge.
Guilty.
You brought this on yourself.
You have no one to blame but you.
There is no one speaking in your defense.
No recess.
No end to the sentence.
And how do you serve it?
In the nights you lie awake, replaying your mistakes.
In the comfort you turn away because you believe you have no right to complain.
In the moments of love or joy you question whether you deserve.
In the times you turn to alcohol or other substances to quiet the blame.
Some choices were yours.
Some things may still need repair.
Some things you can do differently today.
But how does continuing to punish yourself help you do any of that?
We may not recognize this as a trial, because it feels like taking responsibility for our past. We may think that if we keep reminding ourselves of what happened, we will never make the same mistake again.
But when you live as a prisoner of your own guilt, nothing changes. And when the same thoughts repeat for years, the mind may begin to accept them as the truth.
So yes, face the choices you regret. And offer mercy to the person still living with them.
And the next time the trial begins, pause.
Notice how you are speaking to yourself. Then begin again, and again, to look at the life you are living with mercy. Even when you cannot see a way out, you can live without hating the person you were.
Because from that place of mercy, we can begin making choices that support our healing.
The Tinfash Healing Time Practice: ARC
Mercy takes practice. I created ARC for the moments when I catch myself thinking, I wish I had done this or that. It brings me back to the present and to what I can do now.
Begin with a pause and a few gentle breaths. Then follow the ARC:
Acknowledgement: Name what you regret.
Be honest about your part and any harm caused, without turning it into a judgment of your whole life. If it helps, say it out loud. You can acknowledge what happened without repeating the accusation.
Repair: Bring your attention to how you are living today.
When regret pulls you into the same familiar thoughts, pause and breathe.
Ask, What needs my care right now?
Take one small action to meet that need or repair what you can.
Change: Choose how you will respond next.
If the thought returns, notice it and bring your attention back to what you are doing.
If you feel the urge to speak harshly to yourself, pause before saying the words. Choose words that help you move forward.
You cannot change what happened. But you can pause, breathe, and choose how you respond today.
Keep beginning again.
And with practice, offering yourself mercy may come with greater ease.
For the full guided Tinfash Healing Time ARC practice, visit YouTube at @DrKidi.
A Closing Reflection
I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. She wasn’t there during my last few days before I quit. I don’t know whether her foot healed, whether she ever left, or whether she ever smiled in that back room the way she smiled on the floor.
I understand more now about the self-punishment she carried.
Her regrets were real.
So was the life her body was still holding.
That life deserved care, even where she felt stuck.
Now, when I find myself judging my own life by the choices I wish I had made differently, I return to the ARC practice. I acknowledge what happened, repair what I can, and choose a next step that supports the life I am living.
And when I struggle to do that, I offer myself mercy.
I hope you will offer yourself the same.
In Episode 6, When the Apology Never Comes, we turn from the blame we hold against ourselves to the hurt others leave behind, and look for a way forward when someone cannot or will not make it right.
A Mantra to Carry
I can face what I regret and still care for the life I am living.
Say it quietly.
Let it separate who you were from who you are becoming.
Journal Invitation
Write by hand.
Think of a choice you regret. What were you going through at the time?
Use ARC to reflect: What can you acknowledge? What can you repair or care for today? What will you do differently?
Meditation
With that, we begin our healing connection.
Embrace the journey. Keep listening. Healing knows the way.
Love and more love,
Dr. Kidi
More reflections at drkidi.com · Follow @drkidi.healing · Guided meditations on YouTube @drkidi · Short stories on Substack @drkidi
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