Revelation has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it..

I’ve been playing a role for so long, I didn’t even realize it was a script. In it, I am the girl. And every man becomes him.

It doesn’t matter who they are, Husband, Son, Brother, Nephew. The only qualifier is that they are male. Some part of me aches when they are held accountable. Not because they didn’t do wrong, but because I’ve carried a belief that they can’t help it. If they can’t help it, they don’t deserve the full weight of consequences.

So I step in. I soften their edges. I fight their battles. I defend them, believing I can translate their pain. I view their harm through boundless compassion, protecting the one who caused it more than the one who bears it, even when it’s me.

I told myself it was love. But it’s not love. It’s memory.

Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been living an unspoken reversal, ensuring “the man” doesn’t suffer, even when he’s responsible for the harm. It stems from a fear I swallowed as a young girl, when I was locked inside my silence. If I speak up about what happened to me, someone might get in trouble. And if they get in trouble, it’ll be all my fault.

That lie stayed with me, quiet and persistent, long after I left childhood behind.

Every time I shielded a boy from shame or whispered, “He didn’t mean it,” I was reenacting it. Every time I gave a man the benefit of the doubt, a benefit I wouldn’t give myself, I was trying to hold it all together, ensuring no one felt the weight of their actions.

But something shifted. My nephew has been living with us temporarily, and one evening, as I watched him come face to face with the consequences of his own wrong doing, I saw the pattern clear as day. My chest tightened, and I couldn’t unsee it. That’s the feeling I get when my own son is facing the consequences of his actions. That’s the feeling I get when any man I’ve ever dealt with has hurt me emotionally or otherwise. That it should be excusable or brushed off. There has to be a reason they’ve done it so however it affects me or the world is okay. I still see their humanity and the good in all men even at my own expense. Even if I have to shrink my pain, swallow my hurt and close my eyes to the truth. I have sympathy for them but none for me. I close my eyes to the truth in order for them to keep their dignity and avoid accountability and suffering because men don’t suffer. Women do. I wasn’t protecting the men and boys in my family. I was protecting him, the figure from my past. I was protecting the image I created of what a man is, in my mind. I was protecting the version of me who never got to speak, who thought, If he suffers, I’m the cause.

If my son suffers, I’m the cause.

If my nephew suffers, I’m the cause.

If my husband suffers, it’s my fault.

If I don’t stop their suffering then I’m a bad person.

As a young girl, spiritually innocent, I couldn’t believe in evil. Everyone was good in my worldview, only misunderstood, wounded children in adult bodies. Now, as an adult, I see differently. I still believe many people are wounded, but I know someone can carry a wound and still choose to wield a weapon. That truth darkens my worldview, but I still hold my light.

My son deserves a mother who doesn’t teach him that love means escaping responsibility. My daughters deserve a mother who offers empathy equally, who doesn’t dim their truth or voice and doesn’t minimize their emotions just because I’ve dimmed mine. And I deserve to stop carrying the shame of others actions.

I am not a little girl anymore. I’m done with this role. I’m not the redeemer of men. I don’t have to let parts of me die so that others can live. I lay this role to rest. What roles are you still playing, and what would it take to let them go?