Rejected!

On the apologies we hand out for things that are not ours to apologize for

Hello, friend.

Maybe you’re like me and have spent way too much time in your life apologizing for things that may or may not have even been your fault. The weather, dog hair, a view of the sunset that isn’t the best ever.

My daughter apologized to me the other day for being anxious.

She has anxiety. It is not a character flaw, not a choice, not something she is doing at me. It is a thing that lives in her body, the way my paralysis lives in mine. So when she said “sorry,” reflexively, the word already halfway out before she’d thought about it, I said the only thing I ever say in moments like this.

“Rejected!”

This is a game she and I have been playing for a while now. When one of us apologizes for something we have no business apologizing for, the other one gets to reject it. Loudly. With energy. Fervor, even.

I’ve rejected her apologies for driving over potholes when she’s giving me a ride somewhere. Did she put the pothole there? No. I’ve rejected her apology for being anxious, more than once, because anxiety is not a thing she did to me.

She’s rejected mine right back, for what I call my helicopter moments, the texts checking that she landed safely, the questions about whether she’s staying hydrated. “Rejected,” she tells me. “You’re allowed to worry about your kid.” She’s a young adult now, so I feel like some of my worrying might be overkill, but she rejects it all the same

It usually makes us laugh. That’s the whole point. The word is a little absurd, said with a little too much drama. But underneath the joke, something Important is happening. The rejection isn’t just refusing an apology. It’s telling the other person: this was never yours to carry.

I did not want to see my daughter spend her twenties the way I spent so many of my decades, apologizing for things that were never actually mine to apologize for. I have said “sorry” for walking too slowly. For needing to sit down Because my body or mind is exhausted. For canceling plans because my body had other ideas that day. For crying at an inconvenient moment.

Caregiving, grief, and disability often teach us that we owe the people around us an apology for our limitations. When I walk slowly because I’m disabled, some part of me still wants to say sorry for the pace. When my sister is sleep-deprived from caring for our father, she’ll apologize for being short-tempered, for not calling back sooner, for the exhaustion itself, as though exhaustion were a discourtesy rather than a fact of caregiving.

I have a friend who is endlessly generous about extending invitations to me. I say no to most of them. Not because I don’t want to go, but because grief and a difficult body don’t leave a lot of room for unfamiliar social experiences. For a long time I apologized every single time I said no. She finally told me, plainly: she knows I’m grieving and struggling and there’s a good chance I’ll say no. She extends the invitation anyway because she wants me to have it, and because she knows (because I’ve told her) that being asked matters to me even when I can’t say yes. She does not want my apology. She wants me to keep saying yes to the invitations I can say yes to, guilt-free.

That’s what I want for my daughter, too. Not a daughter who’s learned to carry other people’s discomfort as her fault, proof of her inadequacy or that she’s done something wrong. I don’t want her to be a woman who apologizes for her nervous system, her mother’s worry, or the condition of a road she didn’t build.

The two of us have always preferred laughing our way into a truth over lecturing our way there. “Rejected!” is easier to say—and easier to hear—than “you don’t need to apologize for that,” even though it means the exact same thing. The volume helps. The absurd delivery helps. Underneath the deliberate ridiculousness, an apology gets handed back to the person who tried to give it away, and they get to set it down instead of carrying it.

My daughter is anxious sometimes. I worry about my adult child sometimes. Potholes exist and neither of us built them. None of that requires an apology.

It just requires someone standing nearby, ready to yell “rejected” the second you try to hand out an apology.

If something here resonates with you, I’d be honored if you shared it with someone who might need it today. Let’s help each other along on this journey. I’m grateful our paths have crossed.

Onward, in hope and solidarity.
Elizabeth

PS: My self-paced Journaling for Grief course is now available. It includes six lessons—audio recordings, written reflections, and journaling prompts—that you can move through at whatever pace feels right. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, and neither does this course. You can find it here.