When Past Shame Is Met by the Compassion of Now

it's never too late to reframe and heal painful parts of our past

I interrupt our Plant a Pause Spring Series to bring you an important message…

Earlier this week, I posted a story from my past on the Notes feature of Substack. In mere days, it has reached over 100,000 people and is still going strong. This response indicates to me that we, as humans, need this self-compassionate message. I share that with you today, as well as how I am coping with the unexpected pain of reopening a wound I thought had healed. This is my story… then and now.

---

When I was nineteen, I spent my summer nurturing a classroom of children with perpetually runny noses and somber expressions. At night, I partied with friends and strangers and searched for direction in all the wrong places.

One afternoon, a co-worker with silver hair and boney hands asked for a lift home. She worked in the kitchen, preparing meals for the daycare children and staff. As much as I wanted to get home and crawl into bed, I said yes.

During the drive, Miss Faith shared that she was a lifelong educator, an avid knitter, a grieving widow, and caregiver to her ailing mother.

“But even when it’s bad, there’s still good,” she said cheerfully. “No matter how achy or tired I feel when I wake up, I’m grateful I get to put nourishing food into those babies’ bellies.”

Miss Faith pointed to a tiny, dilapidated house with bars on the windows. “Here we are,” she'd said. Then she opened her purse and handed me a crumpled dollar bill. I tried to decline, but she insisted.

The next day, I found Miss Faith chopping carrots into sticks for small hands. I asked if she’d like me to drop her off again. “I’ll take you home every day until I go back to college,” I offered, surprising even myself.

Miss Faith couldn’t give me a dollar every day that summer, but she gave me so much more—stories of a love that lasted forty-seven years, a compassionate perspective on the children's parents, shaped by their own childhood wounds and past addictions, and hope on the hardest days with the kids.

One day when I dropped Faith off, she told me I was a “wonderful young lady”.

“I don’t feel like it,” I confessed, unexpectedly vulnerable with my unconventional friend. “I feel like a mess. I keep making bad choices, and I wonder if I’ll ever do anything with my life that actually matters.”

Faith leaned into the open car window. “You come to the daycare each morning at 7:30am to love on vulnerable babies, and you drive an old lady home, and you are kind. You are doing just fine.”

It may sound odd, but that interaction shifted my perception of myself.

It marked a turning point in my Summer of Shame… and offered a glimpse of grace.

I took Faith’s motto and made it my own:

“Even when I make bad choices, there’s still good in me.”

Dollar or no dollar, that loving truth carried me home.

Thank you, Miss Faith.

---

As I type this, there are 186 humanizing comments on this Note. I have read them all and responded to as many as I can. One of them touched me so deeply I could not stop thinking about it. Lennie wrote:

“I really needed to hear this lesson again. I am far older than you, but I harbor a Summer of Shame, too – more than one, actually. All these years later, here l am actively learning to forgive the choices I made then. I was doing the best I could. To remember the good inside is the self-love lesson we all need. I'm grateful for your writings & that you found Miss Faith.”

What Lennie didn’t know was that the more my story spread, the more my memories did too, sweeping through me like a wildfire and exposing tender scars I thought I’d healed decades ago. I’d put myself in some dangerously stupid situations that summer, chasing acceptance, chasing thinness—grasping for anything that resembled love, even though I knew it wasn’t.

Lennie’s modeling of self-compassion prompted me to do something I needed to do for a very long time: practice forgiving myself.

I opened my copy of Soul Shift to the Practice of Self-Forgiveness. Using the tool I’d created to move through the shame and sorrow of being an emotionally dysregulated parent in my children’s early years, I closed my eyes and envisioned my nineteen-year-old self.

From an impartial viewpoint, I saw:

Rachel’s desperation to be “wanted” like her magnetic friends, and her attempt to achieve this approval by partying, taking risks, saying yes when she wanted to say no.

It wasn’t until Rachel found herself on the floor of a strange apartment with no way home that she realized she was squandering love – and life! – from those who already believed she was more than enough. Rachel had never felt so ashamed, so stupid, so scared.

If I could go back, I’d wrap my 19-year-old self in a long, steady hug and whisper:

“I know you feel ashamed of your actions. But because of what happened that summer, I learned to trust my instincts around unsafe people. I learned how to stand up for myself—and how to support my daughters when they felt uncomfortable around certain people. Rachel, the choices you made that summer, even the ones you regret, kept me safe in the end. They taught me how to honor my boundaries now.”

---

Self-forgiveness is a difficult concept. It is not a one-and-done. I will most likely have to revisit 19-year-old Rachel many times. But when I do, I know I won’t go alone. Miss Faith, Lennie, and all the other people who stepped forward with their scars of understanding will be beside me.

Together, we’ll uproot the weeds of shame we’ve built around our hearts and make space for self-compassion to bloom.

There is still so much good in us… and so much good to come.

My hand in yours,
Rachel

---

🌳 Join Us for Our Next Treehouse Gathering

Our monthly Zoom gatherings have become a comforting touchpoint in these overwhelming times — a space to breathe and reconnect with yourself and like-hearted members of our community.

I hope you’ll join us for the next one on Friday, April 25th at 1:30pm Eastern.

📝 I’ll be offering a new teaching (topic announced next week), followed by time for community sharing and connection.

🔗 The Zoom link will be sent to all paid subscribers ahead of time — and if you can’t join us live, no worries. A replay will be available afterwards to revisit anytime.

Come as you are. These sessions have become a quiet anchor for many of us — and it’s never quite the same without you.

---

🎂 It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since my fifth book, Soul Shift, came into the world on April 28, 2023.
Your reflections and reviews continually remind me that turning my pain into purpose was worth it. Feedback like this has fueled me:

“The other day a teacher friend said that he thought we needed a new modern day Mr. Rogers to emerge in our culture. Author Rachel Macy Stafford brings this type of patience and encouragement and hope to her readers. She encourages grown ups and young ones alike to be real with our feelings and thoughts. She honors our reality while shepherding us along towards a brighter future. Somehow she does this while not diminishing our pain and struggle. Her work is a gift to our culture. She helps mend the frays in the fabric of our communities and our relationships.”
-J.H.

“This book is therapy for the soul. I love the way the theme relates to tending to a garden because it reminds us that we need to nourish ourselves each day as well. Rachel teaches us how to identify our own special gifts and encourages us to use them. In doing this we not only will become fulfilled, but we will impact others with those gifts. I highly recommend this book because I think together we can create a ripple effect of Love and Kindness in the world and this book with help us begin.”
-R.A.

Thank you for reading, for feeling with me, and for letting this book be part of your journey. I love you.