My Marriage Counselor Said One Thing About the Mistakes I Made

And it helped me heal and forgive myself

I remember when my son was 13 years old he did something that would typically warrant a parent's anger. But that day I walked into his room to talk to him and I walked back out.

He didn’t need any discipline.

The first words out of his mouth made one thing very clear.

He was already beating himself up. He didn’t need any reinforcements. He was going to be harder on himself than I was. He was too accountable. I wasn’t going to intensify that.

When my marriage ended I beat myself up.

I couldn’t forgive the mistakes I’d made.

Because the three people I love most paid dearly for them.

In some ways, I forgave my husband more than I forgave myself. It’s easier to make excuses for other people. A little bit harder to make excuses for ourselves. At least, for me it is.

One day I was sitting with my marriage counselor.

“I can’t forgive myself,” I say.

“Why?” he says.

“Because my children have paid the price for every decision I’ve made,” I say. “Worse, I stayed married while my husband was behaving badly and it changed me. I raised my voice and I said the kind of things even four walls shouldn’t hear. And I chose this man. My kids didn’t have a choice over who brought them into this world.”

“Colleen,” says my marriage counselor. “Our greatest strength can become our greatest weakness.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say.

“You weren’t caring,” he says. “You were caring to a fault. It’s one of your greatest strengths but in your relationship, it took you down.”

My marriage counselor had already explained to me what an enabler was.

The day he told me I wasn’t just an enabler but a major, major enabler, “Enablers are overly caring people who tolerate repeatedly bad behavior,” he said.

Enablers make excuses for the intolerable behavior of the one they love.

They hide the behavior from the rest of the world to protect the person they love. They lack the type of self-protective instincts and boundaries that make other people walk away instead of offering too many chances.

I understood his explanation.

But it felt like a negative and a weakness.

Enabling certainly isn’t healthy behavior.

So I beat myself up even more. Or as my marriage counselor used to say, “No one is harder on Colleen than Colleen.”

But on this day, he had spoken words that turned a negative into a positive.

He was speaking my language.

It’s one of the reasons I write. I don’t do it to rehash what’s happened to me. I do it to pull something good from the bad. I do it for a larger purpose. I can’t change what I experienced.

But I can help others potentially escape and avoid it.

One sentence helped me heal.

“Our greatest strength can become our greatest weakness.”

This meant it was a better part of me that got me into trouble. It alleviated my need to focus on my mistakes being misguided or born out of weakness.

It made sense.

I remember the day my friend said to me, “Colleen most people help their family and friends but you will help anyone even those you barely know or strangers.”

I can’t take credit for that.

Any more than I can take credit for the overly caring part.

I come from a long line of NYC and Virginia first responders.

I grew up watching cops, firefighters, and nurses spring into action in their off time, let alone their actual jobs.

You throw my uncle the priest in there and it wasn’t unusual for us to have people we didn’t know around our dining room table because they had nowhere else to go for a holiday.

My mother never said no to anyone.

Despite being a single mom, she used to say, “Go ahead and bring them home. You know me. The loaves and the fishes. There will always be enough.”

It’s hard to heal and forgive ourselves for marital mistakes.

Even harder for a divorce.

But good does come from bad.

I didn’t learn much throughout the years my life was easy. I wouldn’t wish what I’ve been through this past decade on anyone. There were times I didn’t think I would survive my now ex-husband’s wrath.

But I’ve grown.

I’ve learned things about myself.

And these days, I let other people be hard on Colleen.

Because I’m already too accountable.