05/18/2026
Guilt is often easier for the nervous system to carry than helplessness.
Because guilt whispers the illusion that maybe, somehow, we could have changed the outcome.
That if we had said the right thing, noticed sooner, loved harder, stayed longer, left earlier, called one more time… maybe things would be different.
Guilt gives us imagined agency.
It creates the feeling of movement in a situation that left us powerless.
But helplessness?
Helplessness asks us to sit with one of the hardest truths a human being can face: that sometimes terrible things happen even when we loved deeply.
Even when we tried.
Even when we would have done absolutely anything to save someone.
In grief work, I often see people punish themselves because self-blame feels more tolerable than accepting how little control we truly had.
The mind searches for reasons because reasons feel safer than randomness. Safer than loss. Safer than the unbearable ache of not being able to fix what cannot be fixed.
Sometimes healing begins when we gently loosen our grip on the story that it was all our fault.
Not to avoid accountability where it belongs — but to stop carrying responsibility for things that were never ours to hold alone.
Grief is heavy enough already.
You do not have to add self-cruelty to the weight of it.
©️ Holly Smee
