“Your hurt must be seen. But that’s not the job of the person you’re making amends to.”

There is a freedom waiting. It’s limitless, full of love and our hearts yearn for it. The freedom to say to the people you love, “These are the ways I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry.” 

All of us, because we’re human, have visited our shadows, wounds, resentments and fears onto other people. Hurt people hurt people. And we’re all hurting people. (See Buddha, Four Noble Truths, #1…)

Few of us, however, have the courage to own our wrongs and make amends.

In 12-Steps (which Richard Rohr calls the greatest spiritual invention of the 20th century) clearing up the wreckage of our past brings “a new freedom and a new happiness.”

Relationships renew. People fall in love again. Children speak to parents they’d cut off. 

You don’t need to be a 12-stepper to experience this. Most wisdom traditions have a version of reconciliation, from Confession to Carlos Castaneda.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, it’s scary as fuck, which is why most people avoid it.

Every year, I guide dozens of men toward this deep repair, and there’s a classic BLOCK that needs special consideration.

Men want to be good men. To say, “I hurt you. I’d like to make it right.” Their higher selves are ready for this liberation.

But their emotional body is not.

They still feel how they got hurt too. Relationships are, after all, two way streets. And so, they struggle to make the amends “without condition,” which is the critical piece. You can’t apologize with a hidden agenda of getting the other person to see your pain.

Unfortunately, in a world where men are taught early to ignore their feelings, most men assume — and are even told by well-meaning mentors — that they just have to “get over” their hurts, as if they don’t matter.

Your hurts matter. They’re in your body. There is no getting around that.

These feelings — anguish, rage, grief, fear, loss, yearning — they must be felt, expressed and seen.

But not by the person you’re wanting to make amends to.

It’s better to clear the pain with trusted brothers. I’ve seen it a hundred times over now. When men get a chance to viscerally discharge their hurt — in the loving witness of other men — their systems clear. 

Having done the warrior’s work — and it is warrior’s work — of cleaning their own vessel, they can now clean up the relational ones and heal the world.

Magically, paradoxically, when men do this, they often get the return amends they originally craved, but no longer need.