Dealing with Regrets

Cleaning out the heart of what might have been...

Photo by Valeriia Svitlini on Unsplash

A Few things first to consider:

• I’m starting an online group called, “3C Group.” We’ll meet monthly on zoom at a specific time and day each month for nine months. 90 minutes per session

• We will become curious about 1-2 poems per month. We care for those who join this cohort of learning together and being together.

• I”m inviting a published poets and Sage to join us to take us to the deep waters: David Gate, Lucy Clark, Dr. Ben Sammons, Dr. Wes Vander Lugt and others to help us see what we might be missing in a poem—in their poems.

• Peter Ivey, my friend and mountain companion—and an aspiring poet will co-facilitate with me. Peter and I wrote a great book together titled: Solo—Creating Space with God.

• We begin September 30 and we end the Cohort in May 2025. All the information is here: https://www.pottersinn.com/bookstore/3c-group. Space is limited and it’s filling, so think about it and lock in soon.

Finally, I’m experimenting with when to send my Substack out. This week, I’ll send it out on Saturday and see what happens. Sometimes, we have more space on weekends to click and read than in our busy, crowded weeks. Any suggestions on this?

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Now, let’s deal with some regrets.

I’ve been sitting with a question. What are we to do with regrets that we have stored up along the way?  Regrets in love—regrets in vocation—regrets in missed opportunities—regrets in choices we made, paths we took and people we may have harmed. 

You know this question. I’m sure you do. To be human is to admit we are not perfect and we’ve messed up along the way.  To live with regret is to learn to pay attention to what feels broken; what feels messy and what feels unresolved.

When attended to, regrets offer us the invitation to clean up our past so that we can more fully live in the present and future. Regrets are invitations to consider and do business with in the present—if we can—as we can.

When we quiet the pace of our lives and allow our souls to speak to us, it seems we are presented with an invitation to clean up, sweep up and mop up some broken vows and broken “should haves” and “could haves.” Some are people and some are broken opportunities that came into our life.

Our souls are wise. As we grow, age and become wise, it seems even the soul wants freedom from the past. The soul knows that regret is toxic to health and resilience in life.

When we recognize and admit regret, something happens. Now, given all we know, we’d do “it” different.  We’d treat them with more respect, give more grace and allow ourselves more space to not react so quickly—so sharply—so unkind. We may walk away sooner or even never gone down that path in the first place. Maybe. Maybe not.

We need time to do the work that regrets invites us to do. Time allows the soul to ripen like a good melon that just needs more time to bring all the rich flavors that are stored within some regrets. Time allows regret to ripen, maybe sour, maybe signaling us that “it” really does need to go into the trash pile now.  Perhaps, this is why some older people seem to be invited into the school of regret. There’s more time now to think through everything.  In the everything though, we find a few stored up regrets still needing our attention.

Regrets are not chronological. They can become systemic. The roots, if not tended to can spread to the heart as well as the mind.  We don’t have to be old to do the work of resolving regret. We can learn about regret and pay attention when the voices of regret rise up within us. We can unpack the boxes, filled with regret and do a sort of clean up inside.

What is regret? I like this definition:  “Regret is defined as an aversive emotion focused on the belief that some event from the past could have been changed in order to produce a more desirable outcome.”

A more desirable outcome…that sounds nice.

An aversive emotion…does not sound nice. It’s a lingering, gnawing feeling deep inside the soul that broods discontent, guilt,  and shame.

There are regret goes like this:

I wish I would have…

I’m sorry that I…

I should have…

I could have…

I did this and I own it now and I…

I was stupid, naive and totally unaware of  my shadow and dark side. I'm owning that now and I apologize for…

I could have done better when I…

I should have acted more loving…

In dealing with regrets, it’s important as we can to “own” what is ours to own—to acknowledge our part in the situation and express remorse and humility. Remorse and humility are the signs and evidence that someone is truly doing their inner work to clean up something that feels, well, polluted or not clean. Some things, we regret what was done to us—but we don’t have to stay the victim to regrets. We can heal from them; unpack them and move on and through them.

When Gwen and I talk about our own past or an event that one or both of us may feel regret over—we talk “it” out.  As we talk “it” out, we use this language: “

“Does the space between us now feel “clean” that we’ve opened up the wound, cleaned out the puss and gotten rid of the infection? Is the wound now clean to begin healing?”  If the answer is “No” then we try not to pretend like we can move on and through with this roadblock in the way of our space and intimacy. Once in counseling, the counselor admonished us: “I think it best for you to never mention that name again.” Even the name of a city or person can trigger a landslide— taking us down and others with us.

Sometimes, the past is better left sleeping or dead without resurrecting and awakening the bear within. ‘Don’t poke the bear’ is good advice at zoos and in relationships sometimes. It might be good advice when scrolling back through ajob you didn’t take or one that you got fired from… you be the judge of the size of the bears or boxes that might be busting on the shelves.

Dealing with regret is not just looking at what you missed out on but also it is the impact you initiated that you now see, isn’t healthy or beneficial—maybe, “it” was harmful.  It may have been devastating, life-altering or toxic. 

Working through regret offers  us the opportunity to “right size” our life again.  We deflate the what could have been or should have been to reality and reality is good, most of the time. Some regrets swell and bulge our internal boxes. We can let the air out of them. We “right size” our relationships, our dreams, our past and our futures when we do our inner work—a work that seems to beg us for attention as we move through the years.

David Whyte, author and contemporary poet says of regret: “..it takes hard-won maturity to experience the depths of regret in ways that do not overwhelm and debilitate us but put us into a proper, more generous relationship with the future.”

I like the sound of that---that dealing with regrets opens us up to a “more generous relationship with the future.”  We deal with regrets in the past, no matter how brief or how long the past may actually be. A regret could have happened just yesterday or fifty years ago. We deal with regrets as they surface in order to open ourselves up to a more generous future. 

The deal with some regrets is that they imprison the soul and taunt the mind. They rise up like terrorists to take us down—not empower us to move onward or through them. They sabotage our joy and suck the life out of our lungs. We get stuck. We stay stuck and we live stuck until we are stuck into the ground. This is not the way to a more generous future. There is no future in living in a library of dusty regrets. Some of our closets seem filled with boxes of regrets—all stored up for something—or someone to take them down again and again.

Whyte goes on to say, “Fully experienced regret is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even in the average human life. Fully experienced, regret turns our eyes , attention and alert to a future possibility better than our past.”

Goodness sakes alive… regret has a role that if we give attention to this role, we allow our regrets—not just our present lives, but the mistakes, wounds and harm we did to help us live more fully into the future. Now, that’s an invitation that few of us can miss.  Given this, lets stoke the fires within us and uncover old logs of regret that need to be tossed into the fires of transformation.

At my age, perhaps at yours, the “stakes are high” for us to be able to live, finally live, really live the life we WANT and NEED to live.

I think many of us need to build bon fires where we can toss as much as we can into the fires of transformation to be free; to be warm; to be more fully human—meaning not perfect but fully human in that we are now doing the work that we wish we could have; would have done all along. We just weren’t wise; healthy enough or empowered to do so.

The poet Mary Oliver wrote of regrets in her powerful poem, “When Death Comes.”  Oliver so poignantly says:

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Doesn’t she hit the bulls eye of regret? Regret is living with deep sighing; frightened, riddled with anxiety and full of argument with one’s self and with others. Regrets keep us from fully living.

Of course, not every mess of our past can be cleaned up. Some messes need to be accepted, acknowledged and avoided. Wisdom shows you this as we grow up and grow into our own souls. Some regrets need the work of counseling, spiritual direction and soul friendship to listen to  us—to give us space to not only surface and put words to our regrets. But also, to find the way to get the infected puss out of our hearts and minds; out of our past and present; out of our souls where all regret lodges until resolved.

Some ways, I’ve exercised my own agency to deal with regret that these quiet years might be interesting for you to consider. I’ll just list a few action steps I’ve taken and continue to take these days:

-Choose to bless that person or that event—or that untaken path you now wished you would have chosen. Name it as a loss. But in the loss, choose to bless it, him or her. To bless is to say good things, positive things—words of affirmation, not destruction or contempt. 

-Give thanks for what you can in the regret.  Glean what you were offered in that missed experience, person or opportunity. In your heart, say, “Thank you for gracing my life and offering me the life, experience and time that I now cherish. Not all was bad. Some was good. Thank you for the good.”

-Admit that we do not see forward as well as we can understand our past.   When you were younger, you did not know what you now know. You may have made the best decision you could at that particular time you made the choice  you now regret. Give yourself grace and space to your younger self. Now you’re more wise; more in touch with your heart and more courageous to just say what you want and what you don’t want—what you need and what you no longer need.

-Pray the Welcome Prayer daily—perhaps a couple of times a day to let the words sink into the infection of regrets. The Welcome Prayer goes like this:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it's for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and God's action within. Amen.

-ask for forgiveness 77 times—even 77 X 7 times. I just don’t think we realize the sheer power of saying, “I was wrong. Forgive me, please!’ I think this is a spiritual, emotional, even physical transaction we can do right now and right here.

Regrets in marriage; regrets in parenting; regrets in friendship, regrets in our childhood play and so, so much more is the fodder for the fire of transformation. Regrets can be wise teachers and prophets warning us not to make the same mistake. Listen to them. Receive the wisdom from each fall. Then, get up and live again. Live more fully. Live more tenderly. Live  married to amazement. Live alive—fully alive this time.

I think our deep need is to live as clean as possible—to rid ourselves of hurt, regret and emotional baggage. Life is just too short and the ascent in life is just to steep to keep carrying around with us this kind of heavy baggage.

It’s time. It’s time to fully live.

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Here on Substack, for the help of all the new Subscribers, let me say, “Welcome and thank you for coming to this good space. It’s here, that I am both writing prose and poetry. I’ve spent decades at the prose balance beam. Now, I’m trying a new exercise in getting on the pommel horse of poetry… trying to balance the move of words and just a few, precise movements of my heart to show you more but in less words. So in most of my Substack entries, there is a dividing line now where I share my poems who want to see me do my soulful flares on the poetry pommel horse. (I’m still relishing in the Olympics). So, here’s the moment you get to decide how “in” you want to be. To read the poems, you need to become a “Paid Subscriber.” You’ll get the poems, get opportunities and invitations that you don’t if you aren’t “in” on that level. I don’t promise salvation if you subscribe. But I do promise authenticity, honesty, courage and some love!