On impact: memento mori — Susan Raffo

For much of my younger years, I used apology as a way to control a situation. Rather than sit in what’s uncomfortable, I took responsibility for everything. I mean EVERYTHING. I apologized before anyone actually told me there was a problem. I offered up my ego and my agency, the authority to determine right and wrong, more quickly than I offered up anything else. As the years went by, I grew to understand that this was another form of manipulation; a kind of killing-them-with-kindness that prevented true, real, hard, and glorious relationships. For a few years after that, I got stubborn, really stubborn. Taking the other side, I refused to apologize for ANYTHING but then, that didn’t work either. Bottom line: there is no rule book, there is only relationship.

One of the pieces that started to shift my over-apologizing came in the form of a reflection from a beloved Ojibwe teacher-friend. She was reflecting on Catholic patterns — and most of my people have been Catholic for a looooong time — and noticing how much those of us shaped by Catholicism are quick to offer an I’m sorry followed by an air of expectation….. Like ok, I apologized, now you need to forgive me, with or without the Hail Marys. The apology, she noticed, was not the center, the climactic arc, but, instead, the forgiveness was. This waiting-for-forgiveness was shaped by a culture that put priests as intermediaries…