Dear readers,

This week one of you inspired me to dig deeper into "guilt" after I received a comment that I believe all of us have felt directly or indirectly.

So this piece is a continuation or an addition to my last week article:
The Beautiful Rebellion of Choosing Ourselves.

I wrote this piece from a place of curiosity. It's about freedom and a strong desire to not only heal and free myself but you too. It's not a place for blame, it's a place for kindness and understanding what is really under the layers of life.

I hope this piece opens a little door, brings light to something that was dusty or in the shadow of your mind and maybe your heart.

"The mother guilt is real. That's what is most difficult in making decisions for me right now. All the what ifs keep chiming in… just trying to focus on the goal and allowing the universe to take care of the rest."

I'm not a mom. I won't pretend to know what that weight feels like in your body. But I know what it is to feel guilty for wanting something for yourself. And when Amy wrote those words, I felt them somewhere deep. Because guilt isn't something logical. It's physical.

But I wonder if there is also something unconscious in it.

I have a lot of empathy for moms and dads. The visceral physical connection they have with their kids. Has society also made it more painful and harder for us to feel like a good, responsible, and loving parent?

It starts with maternal instincts for moms. The dad feeling disconnected from their partner and children. Same sex couples hearing people say "kids need a mom and a dad." People who don't feel binary and how society dictates what a family is and how our attachment to it "should" be.

So when I read Amy feeling the mom guilt, I feel her. I understand without being in the same position myself. Because I have a mom. I see how my choices affect her. And I hope she has found peace with the guilt society made her carry.

A mom that was enough based on someone outside the relationship. A virus that ingrained in people's minds that there is only one way to be. To be not ourselves. To not listen to our instincts. To avoid feeling. To avoid making ourselves happy with no one and nothing else but us.

I'm not saying the feeling is wrong. Guilt means we care. It means we have a heart.
What if we look deeper at the source? We could find something that could help us all.

When have I felt guilty? I think I felt guilty when I was not enough for people’s expectations. I think I have gotten better at it since.

Leaving my country at 34 to build a life I was dreaming of made me start to reverse that guilt. To learn to detach myself from other people’s expectations. I understood I was doing my best. My best to live my life and unlearn all the crap I had learned in the past. To understand that the only guilt I could allow was toward myself for not showing up for me.

I think not fitting in the world made me feel guilty for it.

Something was wrong with me. I needed to be fixed. Someone else must know better than me what I need.

I wonder if that guilt is interconnected with selfishness. The selfishness that is a reaction from trauma or mental illness. The one where some individuals feel no empathy, care only about themselves, have no expectations from others, and believe they do not need anyone.

I’m not talking about the self-full, self-true, self-honoring. The one that makes us feel alive and grounded. And most importantly makes us fall in love with ourselves.

And yet we get accused of the first when we are simply practicing the second.

So the guilt projected onto others for being “selfish” is a human creation. Based on a belief that we should feel guilty for self-honoring our soul and our heart.

People do not realize how those little sentences sent to us saying “I would never have left my kids”, “I wouldn’t live so far, I would feel guilty for not being there for my family” are hurting and heavy.

As if you don’t feel guilt, you are selfish.

They clearly want us to feel ashamed for wanting something different. For wanting to love ourselves. For not putting someone else first because they need us, because they cannot live without us.

No one should own us.

I know all of that is a trauma response. But instead of looking deep and doing the work to heal, people project their pain onto us.

They do not want to feel their pain, and slowly it becomes ours.

I think about how we grow up seeing our parents act a certain way toward traditions, habits, connection with family members and friends, as if that is THE reference for how to live our life. It's our reference, we learn how to behave and think in the world from our parents. And then we become adults, the world has changed and evolved, women have more freedom but our brain is still somehow stuck in the past. So we feel divided, broken in two. We want to be a good kid but what that means is often the opposite of what we want today.

To free ourselves from it we have to accept that we will always somehow disappoint someone. That we can't be enough for them, for their perception of the world, for their beliefs based on what they learned when they grew up.

Forgetting that the life we had as kids was really a different world. One salary was enough for a couple with a kid. Work was the center of people's life. We had places where people met in person. We had time to spend with the people we love. We wrote letters and sent postcards. We were living in a world where we weren't filmed all the time. Where we didn't share our every movement. We knew about others' lives only through what they chose to share. Women were starting to find independence and make their own money depending on where they lived in the world.

So I ask you, do you think that in 2026 feeling guilty for not being like women in the 80s is really allowing us to find peace and thrive? Or women who grew up in the 50s and lived their adult life in the 90s?

Aren't we hurting ourselves by living in two different worlds at the same time?

I know some Boomers have a hard time connecting with my generation and the younger ones. As if we lived in their world and we are being disrespectful. While they totally forgot they were young too and they also felt that disconnection. When are we going to finally heal together and stop staying stuck in a past that no longer exists and that isn't serving anyone?

It's not about seeking individualism but rather freeing us all from the weight and empowering us to live a life where we have space to be who we are without judgement and pressure. A place where we don't need to shrink to have a spot in the sun.

Awareness is power. It's a chance to rewrite our own story. One that feels calm, alive, peaceful and empowered. And if you are a man, I imagine this story affects you too. So what if we free ourselves from guilt? What if we agree that we trust each other in building a life that is never to overshadow someone else's? What if we trust that following our heart and desire for something different might actually help others along the way to be inspired to do the same?

We are energy and connected to each other. If we want to feel peace we need to ignite it within first.

With gratitude,
Nina

I would love to hear what you think of this reflection and if I missed something.