My wish, when I turned thirty, was to have fewer regrets in my next thirty than I did in my first thirty years. I felt I failed. When I look back on my first thirty years, the regrets I had are so small compared to the regrets in adulthood, specifically motherhood. In my first thirty years I was young, learning, supposed to make mistakes. After thirty, you are expected to be grown up and raising the next generation so one better be complicated free. Yes, I realize this is unrealistic; idealistic expectations are the doorway to regret. I read the posts about how your first born ‘grew up’ with you as you learned to parent. Your second one shares with you a sense of freedom or adventure you wish for. Both are true for me.

Regrets can be powerful teachers in the lessons of life. In grief, they can also become a trap that snares any chance of healing.  Exploring what is a regret, my list includes things that have happened that I had control of and some I had no control of. So, are they all regrets?  I regret not putting a tire swing on the tree for the kids. Why? They had lots; the lack of a tree swing did not alter their development. Get over it. I regret moving to a new community albeit we returned.  So, mistake fixed. I regret telling Zane to go and enjoy that night he was killed. I think the things that I say I regret are the things I will never know if they were the decisions that forged the path to where I now travel on.

Pondering my feelings, meditating with my angels, as I often do, I came across a quote. “Regret is the only wound the soul does not recover from.” Could this be why I feel stuck? It encouraged me to think about if what I am feeling is regret (I was in control) or disappointment (out of my control). Then I read the author of this quote was Sarah Ban Breathnack.  She wrote Simple Abundance, a book I read over and over, and that Zane knows is my all time favorite. And I knew that her quote came to me, through Zane. Perhaps it is not regret that I am feeling, perhaps the emotion is disappointment.

Regrets are all the things said or unsaid, done or undone that we no longer have a chance to fix. Or at least we feel we have no chance. And sometimes we don’t. And I think that is where disappointment lies.  Part of grieving is that your heart explores every corner, every aspect of what might have been done differently to not have ended up here. The truth settles into your soul disguised as regret, but really it is disappointment of what we wished was to be is not ever to be.

In the end, the answer is always one could have done more. Death takes that away. The quote sent to me is a reminder that if I wish my soul to heal, I must understand that I have no real regrets. I used the daily strength given to me to do my best. With that, whatever came to be, it cannot become a regret chained to me to cause more angst. The regrets I thought I carried are just disappointments that I did not have more time, more experiences with those I love.