Okay, I need you to hear me out.
This week, we are talking about a raccoon breaking into Chili's. And if you just paused your entire day and thought, what the actual hell does that have to do with mental health? Perfect, that is exactly where I want you to be.
Because somehow, someway, we are going to take a raccoon breaking into a Chili's and turn it into a conversation about healing, responsibility, trauma, self-blame, boundaries, and the extremely inconvenient realization that sometimes you are the one holding the mop. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but stay with me, because I think one of the most painful parts of healing is realizing that something can be completely unfair and still be your responsibility to deal with it.
Not your fault, not something you deserved, not something you caused, but something you have to clean up. And honestly, I hate that, so let's talk about it.
Imagine this, for the sake of this story, you work at Chili's, you have the closing shift, it's a stormy Friday night, and all of the customers have gone home, the cooks have gone home, the restaurant is quiet. And you, you are ready to leave.
You have been thinking about going home for the last three hours. You want to put on your pajamas, you want your favorite blanket, you want to turn on your favorite show, you want to eat something that probably has absolutely no nutritional value.
And you want to forget that the outside world exists for approximately 12 hours. And honestly, valid. So you're cleaning.
Everything is pretty much done. Tables are clean. Chairs are up.
Counters are wiped down. The restaurant is looking beautiful. All that's left is the floor.
So you fill up the mop bucket, you put in the little cleaner, you grab your mop, and you start mopping. You're almost finished when you look across the restaurant and realize something. The front door.
You forgot to lock it. Now, normally, you would probably walk across the restaurant and lock the door. But tonight, you are exhausted.
You're across the restaurant. You are so close to being done. And you think, eh, it'll be fine.
What is the worst that could happen? And this is where I would like to introduce the concept of foreshadowing, because apparently the universe heard you say, what could go wrong? And responded, oh, you have no idea.
You're nearly finished mopping when you hear it. The front door opens, you freeze, you look up, nobody's there. And you're confused because the door just opened.
You slowly look toward the bottom of the door, and then lightning.
And in that flash of lightning, you see a silhouette, a tiny silhouette, forelegs, little ears, and then you hear it, this horrifying little, and you realize it's a raccoon, a little trash panda, a bin bandit, a gutter goblin, a tiny criminal with absolutely no regard for private property. And before you can even process what's happening, this raccoon sprints into the restaurant. It jumps onto a table, chairs go flying, the chairs you just put up, and you're standing there like, oh, okay, oh.
And the raccoon looks around, scans the restaurant, and then it spots the bar. And apparently this raccoon has a drinking problem because it runs directly toward it.
It starts grabbing glasses, smashing them glass everywhere, and you are standing there thinking, are you kidding me? But here's the thing, this raccoon doesn't even care about the alcohol.
It doesn't care about the margaritas, it doesn't care about the two-for-one special. This raccoon is here for one thing, destruction. So you grab your mop, and at this point, you have accepted that your Friday night has taken a turn.
You run toward the raccoon, mop raise, you're yelling, the raccoon takes off, but does it leave through the front door? No, of course not, because that would make sense. Instead, it runs into the kitchen.
So you follow it, and this little creature is going absolutely feral. Salsa is everywhere, chocolate cake is on the floor, glass is broken, food is scattered, things are knocked over.
The restaurant that was spotless 10 minutes ago now looks like a small army of raccoons had a house party in it. But no, just one, one tiny little criminal. And you finally snap.
You let out a battle cry, and you charge, and somehow you managed to get the raccoon out. You slam the door, you lock it, and you stand there for a second. Your head against the glass, you breathe.
Silence. You think, it's over. And then you turn around and you see it.
The mess. The absolute disaster behind you.
And this is where the story gets interesting, because you didn't make that mess.
You didn't knock over the chairs, you didn't smash the glasses, you didn't throw salsa across the kitchen, you didn't cake chocolate cake onto the floor, you didn't decide to turn chilies into the set of an animal-themed horror movie.
The raccoon did. And yet, you're holding the mop. The raccoon is gone, and nobody else is coming.
And that is one of the most unfair parts of life. Sometimes you are standing in a mess that you did not make, and you still have to decide what you're going to do next.
You could sit down in the cake-covered floor and scream, the raccoon should clean it! And honestly, you would have a point. You'd be correct.
You could call the raccoon, you could file a formal complaint, you could stand at the door screaming, get back here! But here's the problem. The raccoon isn't coming back, and the salsa is still on the wall.
Glass is still on the floor, and you are still holding the mop. And I think this is one of the hardest lessons in healing, because sometimes it is not your fault, but it is still your responsibility.
And those two things can exist at the exact same time. There is a difference between fault and responsibility. Fault asks, who caused this?
Responsibility asks, who has to deal with what happened now? And those are not always the same person. Sometimes the person who caused the damage gets to walk away.
Sometimes they never apologize. Sometimes they don't even realize how much damage they caused. Sometimes they know.
And they don't care. Sometimes they genuinely believe they did nothing wrong. And you, you're left standing there looking at the broken glass thinking, why the hell am I the one holding them off?
And I think that question comes up in healing more than we talk about. Because somebody can hurt you and leave. They can damage your trust and leave.
They can make you question yourself and leave. They can teach you to be afraid of something you were never afraid of before and leave. They can change the way you see yourself and leave.
They can leave behind beliefs about yourself that were never yours to begin with and leave. And suddenly, you're the one sitting there trying to figure out how to put yourself back together. And you think, why do I have to do this?
And honestly, I don't know. I wish I had a prettier answer. I wish healing worked like a courtroom.
I wish the person who hurt you automatically received a bill in every therapy session. I wish every harmful person got an itemized invoice. Hello, you caused $4,700 worth of emotional damage.
Please see attached. Unfortunately, life doesn't really work that way. Sometimes a person who made the mess doesn't clean it.
Sometimes they don't even see the mess, and that sucks. But your healing cannot depend on the raccoon coming back.
And I want to be really careful here, because when we say it's my responsibility, I do not mean everything that happened to me is my responsibility. Absolutely not. There is a huge difference.
If someone mistreats you, their behavior is their responsibility. If someone lies to you, their lie is their responsibility. If someone violates your boundaries, their choice to violate them is their responsibility.
If somebody intentionally or carelessly causes harm, you don't suddenly become responsible for their behavior just because you are the one affected by it. No. You didn't cause the raccoon.
You didn't write the raccoon. You didn't tell the raccoon to break every glass and chilies. But now that the raccoon has left, you get to decide what happens next.
That's responsibility, not blame, agency. And agency is a very different thing. Sometimes responsibility sounds like, I didn't choose this, but I can choose what I do with it.
It can sound like, I didn't cause this belief, but I can question whether I still want to believe it. I didn't create this fear, but I can learn how to feel safe again. I didn't break my trust, but I can decide who gets access to it now.
I didn't teach myself to hate myself, but I can learn a different language. I didn't make this mess, but I can start cleaning one piece at a time. And I think that is where healing becomes incredibly powerful.
Because responsibility doesn't mean accepting blame, it means recognizing that your life is still yours.
Let's say that the raccoon destroys the restaurant. You could stand there staring at the mess forever, and I don't mean that judgmentally, because sometimes that's what we do.
We stare at the mess, we replay it, we analyze it, we wonder why the raccoon did it. We wonder whether we should have locked the door. We wonder if we somehow caused the raccoon to come inside.
We wonder if there was something we could have done differently.
We wonder if maybe, if we had been better employees, or better people, or more careful, or smarter, or less trusting, or more aware, maybe the raccoon wouldn't have destroyed everything.
And eventually, we start blaming ourselves for the raccoon's behavior. And that's when healing gets complicated. Because yes, maybe you forgot to lock the door.
Maybe there was something you could have done differently. Maybe there were warning signs you didn't recognize. Maybe there were things you wish you knew then that you know now.
And you can learn from that. But learning from something is not the same as blaming yourself for it. That distinction matters.
A lesson is not a punishment. You can say, next time I'm locking the door without saying, I deserve what happened because I didn't lock the door. Those are completely different statements.
One gives you information, the other gives you shame. And shame is a terrible teacher. I think a lot of us were taught that if something bad happened, we need to find the thing we did wrong.
Because if we can find what we did wrong, then maybe we can prevent it from happening again. And psychologically, that can feel safer. Because if it was our fault, then theoretically, we have control.
If I caused it, I can prevent it. And sometimes our brains would rather believe I caused this than accept something terrible happened and I couldn't control it. Because helplessness is terrifying.
So we go back.
We analyze every conversation, every text, every decision, every red flag, every moment we ignored our gut, every time we said yes, every time we didn't say no, every time we trusted someone, every time we didn't leave sooner, every time we stayed, every time we tried again. And we turn our entire history into a courtroom, and we become both the prosecutor and the defendant. And we're sitting there trying to prove that we somehow deserved what happened. But sometimes the answer is much simpler.
The raccoon was a raccoon. It did what raccoons do. And the fact that you didn't anticipate a raccoon breaking into Chili's doesn't mean you deserve the destruction.
Sometimes, people hurt people. Sometimes, people make terrible choices. Sometimes, people are unsafe.
Sometimes, people don't have the capacity to love you properly. Sometimes, people are selfish. Sometimes, people are reckless.
And sometimes, people are carrying their own unhealed shit and throw it all over everybody else. And none of that automatically becomes your fault. But here's where I want to challenge you.
Because there's a point where saying, it wasn't my fault can become incomplete. Not wrong, incomplete. Because if we stop there, we can accidentally give the thing that hurt us control over the rest of our lives.
We can say, they did this to me. And that can be true. But eventually, healing asks, okay, and now what?
Not because you should have handled it differently. Not because you should be over it. Not because what happened wasn't significant, but because your life is still happening.
The restaurant is still there. The floor is still covered in glass, and you deserve to live in a clean space again. Or at least we're gonna clean space for this story.
And cleaning doesn't have to mean pretending nothing happened. This is important. You don't have to mop up the salsa and then say, what salsa?
No, there was salsa, there was a raccoon, there was broken glass, there was chocolate cake everywhere. You don't have to erase your history to heal. Healing isn't pretending the restaurant was never destroyed.
Healing is being able to look around the restaurant and say, yeah, that happened. And then, what do I need now?
Maybe you need boundaries, maybe you need therapy, maybe you need rest, maybe you need to grieve, maybe you need to learn what healthy relationships actually look like, maybe you need to rebuild trust, maybe you need to forgive yourself for things you did when you were simply trying to survive. Maybe you need to stop abandoning yourself to keep other people happy. Maybe you need to learn how to say no.
Maybe you need to learn that someone's disappointment does not automatically mean you've done something wrong. Maybe you need to learn that you don't have to earn love by tolerating mistreatment.
Maybe you need to learn that being kind is not required, being endlessly accessible. Maybe you need to learn that your boundaries are allowed to inconvenience people. And maybe you need to learn how to mop.
Not because you caused the mess, but because you deserve a clean floor. And I wanna talk about something that I think is really important. You don't have to clean everything at once.
Because when you look at the chilies after the raccoon rampage, you're probably going to feel overwhelmed.
There's glass everywhere, food everywhere, chairs are everywhere, and you're standing there with one mop, and your brain goes, how the hell am I supposed to fix all of this? You aren't. Not tonight.
You don't have to rebuild the entire restaurant before midnight.
You just have to start somewhere, pick up one piece of glass, then another, move one chair, wipe one counter, clean one section, and eventually the restaurant starts looking like a restaurant again. And healing is like that.
Sometimes we make healing into this giant project. I need to fix my self-esteem. I need to process everything.
I need to become confident. I need to stop being anxious. I need to have perfect boundaries.
I need to forgive everyone. I need to love myself. I need to trust people again.
I need to be completely healed. And suddenly healing itself becomes another impossible to-do list. No, pick up one piece of glass.
That's enough for today. Maybe today your piece of glass is getting out of bed. Maybe it's eating.
Maybe it's taking a shower. Maybe it's answering one email. Maybe it's going outside.
Maybe it's telling someone, actually, that doesn't work for me. Maybe it's deleting a number. Maybe it's making an appointment.
Maybe it's crying. Maybe it's sleeping. Maybe it's laughing.
Maybe it's doing absolutely nothing productive and letting yourself exist. That's still part of cleaning. And here's another thing.
You are allowed to be angry. Oh my god, please be angry. But not forever.
Not in a way that destroys you. But you are allowed to look at the broken glass and say, this is unfair, because it is. You don't have to immediately turn everything into a lesson.
Sometimes, something just sucks. Sometimes you are allowed to say, I didn't deserve that. That hurt me.
I'm angry. I wish it had been different. I wish they had treated me better.
I wish I didn't have to deal with this. And you don't have to make it inspirational five minutes after it happens. You don't need to slap a quote over your pain and post it on Instagram.
Sometimes you just need to sit on the floor and go, What the hell, raccoon? And that's okay. Healing doesn't require you to be endlessly positive.
It requires you to be honest.
And I think there's another trap we fall into. Sometimes we become so focused on the raccoon that we forget to notice the person holding the mop. We spend years thinking about the person who hurt us.
Why did they do that? Do they regret it? Do they miss me?
Do they understand? Will they apologize? Will they ever change?
Do they think about me? Did they know what they were doing? And meanwhile, you're standing there holding the mop and your life is happening.
And I think sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is stop asking, when is the raccoon going to come back and make this right? And start asking, what do I need to make my life feel like mine again? That's a very different question.
One keeps your attention on them, the other brings it back to you. And let me say something else. Cleaning the chilies does not mean letting the raccoon back in.
This is where boundaries come in. Because imagine you finally clean everything. The glasses are replaced, the chairs are back, the salsa is gone, the floor is clean.
Everything looks beautiful again. And then you hear scratching at the door, and you're like, oh my god, he's back. And someone says, well, maybe we should let him in.
We don't want to be mean. No, lock the door. You can heal and still have boundaries.
You can forgive someone and still not give them access. You can understand why someone behaved the way that they did, and still decide you don't want them in your life. You can have compassion without offering yourself as a punching bag.
You can love someone and recognize that they're not safe for you. You can wish someone well from a very, very, very far distance. You can say, I don't hate you, I just don't want you in my restaurant.
And that's okay, because forgiveness does not equal access. Understanding does not equal permission. Compassion does not require proximity, and healing does not mean reopening the door.
And sometimes, the hardest boundary is with ourselves, because sometimes we are the ones who keep walking back to the door. We say, maybe this time it'll be different. Maybe they changed.
Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe I should just give them another chance.
And sometimes, people genuinely do change. Absolutely, people are capable of growth, but growth doesn't mean you have to volunteer to be the experiment. You are allowed to say, I'm glad you've changed.
I'm still not coming back. That's not bitterness, that's discernment. And discernment is one of the things we develop when we stop confusing being loving with being endlessly available.
So if you've ever had a raccoon in your life, and maybe you know exactly who I'm talking about, I want you to hear me. You don't have to minimize what happened just because you're healing. You don't have to pretend it didn't affect you.
You don't have to rush to forgiveness. You don't have to make peace with someone who hurt you. You don't have to prove that you're over it.
You don't have to be grateful for the experience. You don't have to say, everything happens for a reason. Maybe it did, and maybe it didn't.
I don't know. What I do know is that something happening to you does not have to become the definition of you. The raccoon can destroy the restaurant without owning the restaurant.
That's important. What happened to you can be part of your story without becoming your entire identity. You are more than what happened to you.
You are more than the person who hurt you. You are more than the relationship that ended. You are more than the betrayal.
You are more than the mistake. You are more than the version of yourself that existed while you were surviving. There is still a you underneath all of that, and that person deserves to come home.
And maybe that's what responsibility really is, not, I caused this, but I'm going to take care of myself now. I'm going to protect my peace. I'm going to learn.
I'm going to ask for help. I'm going to rebuild. I'm going to make different choices when I have the information to make them.
I'm going to stop punishing myself for information I didn't have at the time. I'm going to give myself grace. I'm going to stop expecting myself to be perfect.
I'm going to clean the pieces I can reach, and I'm going to leave the rest for tomorrow because I'm human. And humans don't heal in straight lines. Sometimes you clean the restaurant and then somebody spills salsa again.
Sometimes you think you're completely over something and then a smell, a song, a day, a place, a person, a memory, and suddenly you're right back in it. That doesn't mean you failed. It means you're human.
Grab them up again, take your breath, start where you are. And I want to give you a little exercise this week, because obviously I can't make an entire podcast episode about Iraq and breaking into Chili's without giving you homework.
So here's what I want you to do. Take a piece of paper and make two columns. On one side, write, not my fault, and the other, my responsibility.
And I want you to be honest. Under, not my fault, write the things you did not cause.
Maybe someone else's behavior, maybe something that happened to you, maybe someone's choices, maybe things you couldn't control, maybe the fact that someone failed to love you properly, maybe the fact that someone broke your trust, maybe circumstances that were completely outside of your control, whatever applies to you. Then on the other side, write what belongs to you now. Not because you caused it, but because you're the person who gets to decide what happens next.
Maybe that's getting help, maybe that's hitting boundaries, maybe that's rebuilding your confidence, maybe that's taking care of your body, maybe that's learning to trust yourself, maybe that's forgiving yourself, maybe that's changing your environment, maybe that's leaving something or someone behind, maybe that's finally admitting, this hurt me more than I wanted to admit. Maybe it's simply saying, I'm ready to stop carrying this by myself.
And when you look at those two columns, I want you to notice something. The first column isn't an accusation. The second column isn't a punishment, it's freedom.
Because when you stop carrying responsibility for things that were never yours, you have more energy for the things that actually are. And maybe, just maybe, one day, you'll look around your chilies.
And the floor is clean, the glasses are replaced, the chairs are upright, the kitchen is clean, the salsa is gone, the cake is gone, the storm has passed, and you realize something. The restaurant isn't the same as it was before.
There are probably a few scratches, maybe there's a broken table that got replaced, maybe you have a new security system, maybe you would triple check the front door now, but it's yours, and it's peaceful, and you're standing there with the mop, not because you're cleaning up after the raccoon anymore, but because you decided that you deserve a place worth taking care of. And that's the part I really want you to remember, you are worth taking care of.
Even when someone else didn't take care of you, even when someone else hurt you, even when someone else made a mess, even when you didn't feel like it, even when you're exhausted, even when you're angry, even when you're embarrassed, even when you're still figuring it out, you are still worth taking care of. And you don't have to wait for the person who hurt you to understand your worth before you start treating yourself like you have it.
So to every person listening who is standing in the middle of their own chilies right now, looking around at the broken glass, wondering why the hell they're the one holding them up.
I want you to know something, you didn't deserve the raccoon, you didn't deserve the mess, you didn't deserve the broken glass, you didn't deserve to have to clean up something you didn't destroy. But you are not powerless now.
You get to pick up the mop, not because it's fair, not because it was your fault, not because the raccoon gets to walk away without consequences, but because you deserve to have your restaurant back, you deserve to have your peace back, you deserve your trust back, you deserve your confidence back, you deserve your life back. And maybe you won't get the old version of yourself back.
Maybe you'll become someone new, someone who knows where the exits are, someone who locks the door, someone who recognizes raccoons a little faster, someone who doesn't hand everyone a key, someone who knows that kindness doesn't mean access, someone who knows that being hurt doesn't mean being broken, someone who knows that responsibility isn't the same thing as blame, someone who knows how to say, that wasn't my fault, but also saying, but I'm going to take care of myself now. And honestly, I think that's pretty damn powerful. So yes, the raccoon was a jerk. The raccoon should absolutely have to pay for the damages, but the raccoon isn't coming back. And you, you're still here.
So grab the mop, one piece of glass at a time. You don't have to clean the whole restaurant tonight. You just have to start.
And please, lock the damn door.