The Harvest of a Lifetime

Sarah started coaching with me believing she was a failure.

Her daughter had passed away after struggling with addiction, and Sarah was beating herself up for losing her.

She clung to the regret and guilt by taking the position that she should have done more.

“If only I had…” had become a repetitive, rehearsed mental phrase.

I felt for her. She was having a tough time, reeling around everything that could have been.

If you're a parent, this is a worst-nightmare situation.

Heck, I even went through a version of this when we lost a family pet.

But it had been a couple of years, and she came to see me hoping to gain some clarity and resolve. She was also battling brain fog, fatigue and forgetfulness, and wanted to regain some of her physical and mental vitality.

So we began.

We started looking into the great void that was robbing her of energy:

The perception that she hadn't been enough.

Gathering the Evidence

We spent the next three hours going through an exercise that would profoundly shift her experience.

We sat across from each other; I with dry-erase marker in hand and her with her thinking cap on.

I asked her one simple question:

“Tell me, how were you a great mom?”

Stumped, uncertain and seemingly clueless, she paused for what felt like five minutes.

Finally, she said, “I taught her how to sew.”

“Great,” I said. “What else?”

“I made her lunches when she was young.”

“Fantastic. Next…”

Quietly, she said, “I drove her around to all of her activities.”

“Keep going…”

And on and on we went, back and forth, pulling together the pieces of her parenting puzzle.

Lunches. Lessons. Car rides. Conversations. Celebrations. Worry. Forgiveness. Opportunity. Love.

Over and over again, we collected the evidence.

After a few hours, with a tear in her eye, she said:

“Wow…that was a lot of life we lived together.”

Then she finished with:

“I did the best I could. It really was her life to live.”

And that was the game changer.

The Ending Isn't the Whole Story

At that moment, she recognized that she had dedicated her life to raising her child. She taught her everything she could. She gave her every opportunity she could provide. She went above and beyond what she had ever imagined possible, passing down generations of learning.

And at the end of the day, her daughter still had her own life to live.

Her daughter had received love, care, opportunity and family support. Addiction still became part of her story and ultimately contributed to her death.

That ending was devastating.

But it was not proof that Sarah had failed as a mother.

It did not erase forty years of relationship, wisdom, memories and love.

With that awareness, Sarah was able to begin releasing the guilt and shame. She was no longer “the parent who failed.”

She was the parent who gave her very best; all that she had. She had experienced a beautiful lifetime raising her family, alongside the terrible pain of losing a daughter whose life took a path she could not control.

She began to remember how powerful their relationship had been. All the amazing times they had shared. All the wisdom she had passed along. All the love that existed between them.

Nothing was missing in her as a parent.

The Harvest of a Lifetime

So often, our grief and sadness become interlaced with the belief that we weren't enough, didn't do enough, could have done better or should have done better.

But when you look deeply enough, you may discover what Sarah discovered:

An abundance of love.

An abundance of time, energy, effort, sacrifice, consideration and care accumulated over an entire lifetime.

Sarah had been judging her motherhood by its most painful ending instead of gathering the evidence of everything she had planted, nurtured and grown.

This is the harvest of a lifetime.

A time to stop staring only at what was lost and begin collecting what was given, what was shared and what was grown.

With Sarah's new awareness, guilt no longer defined how she remembered their relationship.

And that's the reset.

That's healing.

That's what's possible through an abundance of self-value, seeing the bigger range of experience, knowing you gave fully and whole-heartedly.

Rich and abundant value.

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Continue the Conversation

What part of your life might look different if you gathered the evidence of everything you gave, rather than focusing only on what went wrong?

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