A few months ago, I had a very public struggle with my email newsletter.
First, I neglected to include an important sign-up link in my regular weekly email. Then, when I sent out an email to correct this mistake, I used the wrong link. Then, when I finally got the right link out to my community, my payment processor decided to stop working. So no one was able to register for my event.
For two days after that first newsletter went out, one where I shared my wound about being denied love as a five-year-old, I was in a rolling panic about the wrong links. The Square failures. The repeated emails trying to fix what kept breaking.
I was frustrated. Angry. The digital demons were eating up my time and energy, and I felt myself spiraling into that state of dysregulation where everything feels urgent, and nothing works, and you’re running on empty, but you can’t stop trying to fix it all RIGHT NOW.
For two entire days, I was mired in that state, and it sapped my energy completely. And then, I just stopped. I didn’t send another email. I didn’t try to fix one more thing. I just stopped and let the situation be what it was.
And in that stopping, I realized: This is not a crisis. This does not warrant all the energy I’m wasting on it.
People who want to register will find a way. The ones who are meant to be there will be there. The digital demons can have this battle. I’m done fighting.
The Breakthrough
And right there, in that moment of surrender, something extraordinary happened. A thought dropped in so clearly it took my breath away:
“This is probably what my mother was feeling that day.”
That day when I was five. When I ran home sobbing, needing comfort. When she met me with fury instead of love. She was probably dysregulated. Fighting her own internal battles. Running on empty just like I was in that moment with the digital chaos.
She simply couldn’t cope with a frightened, sobbing five-year-old. Not because I was disgusting or wrong or too much. But because she had nothing left to give.
That realization shifted everything for me.
I felt the truth of it land in my body, and then I felt waves of forgiveness, for her, for myself, for that entire impossible situation, wash through me. This wound I’ve carried my whole life? This belief that my need for love was shameful? It was mostly an accident of timing. Two people running on empty. Two people dysregulated simultaneously. One small child who couldn’t possibly understand. And one exhausted mother who couldn’t possibly cope.
There was no malice. No proof of my unworthiness. Just a collision of imperfection. Bad timing and human limitation. My five-year-old self had no way to know that, of course. So she drew the only conclusions she could. But they were the wrong conclusions. Conclusions that shaped my whole life.
“I’m too much. My needs are disgusting. Don’t ever be vulnerable again.”
All wrong. All based on a moment when two imperfect humans were simply at their breaking point at the exact same time.
Freedom Through Imperfection
And suddenly, I was free.
Not through perfect spiritual practice. Not through trying harder. Not through getting it right. Through my own messy, frustrating, perfectly imperfect struggle with digital chaos that showed me what my mother must have felt in that moment.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I was freed by the very digital demons I’d been so frustrated with.
My imperfection gave me the perspective to finally see hers. My dysregulation showed me hers. My running on empty revealed hers. And in that revelation, the wound healed. Not perfectly. Not completely erased. But healed enough. Softened enough. Understood enough.
I am perfectly imperfect. She was perfectly imperfect. We are all perfectly imperfect, experiencing life and learning as we go.
Here’s what I’m learning
Sometimes our imperfection IS the teacher. Sometimes our frustration shows us someone else’s frustration. Our limits reveal someone else’s limits. Our breaking points illuminate theirs. And in that illumination, forgiveness becomes possible. Not as a spiritual achievement, but as a natural response to finally understanding.
“Oh. You were human. Just like me. Struggling. Just like me. Doing your best with what you had. Just like me.”
We spend so much energy trying to be perfect. Trying to get it right. Trying to never make mistakes or lose our cool or send three emails in a row with the wrong links. But what if our imperfection is exactly what opens the door to compassion? To forgiveness? To freedom?
What if being perfectly imperfect is not a problem to solve, but a truth to embrace?
An Invitation
If you’ve been carrying a wound from someone who hurt you, perhaps you could consider this:
What if they were running on empty that day? What if they were dysregulated, fighting battles you couldn’t see? What if their inability to meet you had nothing to do with your worth and everything to do with their limitations? This doesn’t excuse harm or say it was okay. It’s just a shift of perspective to understand it as human imperfection colliding with human need. Sometimes that understanding is enough. Sometimes it shifts everything.
And sometimes, like me, you discover that freedom through the most unlikely teacher: your own perfectly imperfect struggle with digital demons that won’t cooperate.
If you recognize yourself in this essay and would like a guide to help you along your journey to reclaiming your joy and freedom, I invite you to fill out my intake form.