The Importance of Saying Sorry

Everybody gets it wrong sometime. We all have times in our lives when the stresses and strains of day to day life get us down. They make us unreasonable and behave in ways that hurt other people.

Sometimes it's in a relationship. We may feel undervalued or unimportant and so we do and say things either in a conscious desire to hurt or in a desperate attempt to make ourselves feel like we matter,

Sometimes we lash out at our friends or family. Often its as a result of well meaning advice. When you are so wrapped up in your own little bubble of unhappiness it can seem so patronising for someone else to say that they understand how you feel. To suggest ways that you could change things, to tell you you're getting it wrong.

Sometimes we hurt our children. When we are unhappy we are less tolerant, less able to deal with the day to day round of cooking, cleaning, homework and bickering. Sometimes even their love seems unbearably claustrophobic.

Sometimes, no matter how many people surround you, no matter how much love and kindness they show you. No matter how much you know you have to be grateful for, you feel alone, isolated and lost.

Sometimes you just have to be allowed to work through this and no amount of advice or cajoling and sometimes even well meaning bullying will make it happen any quicker.

Sometimes we need to make sense of it all.

Saying sorry doesn't change what's been said or done. Saying sorry doesn't take away the hurt that someone else has inflicted on you.

But saying sorry IS an acknowledgement, an acceptance that what has happened was wrong And SOMETIMES that can make all the difference.

I believe in saying sorry. If I snap at my children (which I often do), I tell them I'm sorry. I tell them I may not like the way they have behaved or something they have said but it's the action I dislike, not the child. The child I love.

Sometimes it's not them at all, it's me. I'm unhappy, worried, feeling stressed or upset at someone else's actions. Sometimes my children suffer because of this and I'm unreasonable, I'm short tempered. I'm not the mother I want to be

If I can teach my children one thing I would like it to be responsibility. I want them to understand that although sorry may just be a small word and although sometimes it feels like the hardest word to say. Its one of the most important word they will ever learn.

Telling someone you are sorry and genuinely meaning it is lifting a burden from that person. Allowing them to move forward without that feeling that somehow it's their fault that they deserved to be hurt.

Being sorry is important for you. Telling someone you are sorry is important for them.

I'll never be afraid to say I'm sorry and I'll always feel sad for those who don't value it's importance.