The Moment I Stopped Apologising For Who I Am

I used to be really good at sorry.

Sorry for asking too many questions. Sorry for leaving early. Sorry for being too much, or not enough, or just... inconvenient. I wore sorry like a second skin — reflexive, automatic, exhausting.

And then something shifted.

It didn't happen overnight. It happened slowly, and then all at once — the way most important things do.

The turning point was 40.

I'd started doing deeper, regular work with a psychologist, and for the first time in my life I was really sitting with the stuff I'd spent decades side-stepping. The stored emotional trauma from childhood. The patterns I'd absorbed without realising. The way all of it had quietly, consistently shaped how I showed up as a mum — and how I felt about myself as one.

It was confronting. It was also the most important work I've ever done.

Because when you start to understand why you are the way you are, something remarkable happens. You stop blaming yourself quite so hard for it.

Alongside that work, Let it Go became a quiet companion on the journey. It's designed for exactly those moments when you're carrying old emotional weight that isn't yours to keep — the resentment, the confusion, the pain that's been sitting in the body long past its use-by date. For me it was about moving into the present without dragging the past along with me. Which, when you're unpacking childhood stuff with a psychologist, is no small thing.

And when I stopped being so hard on myself? I stopped inviting other people to be hard on me either.

That was a revelation. Genuinely. The moment I realised I didn't owe myself constant criticism, I realised I didn't owe anyone else an apology for simply existing as I do.

Then came the ADHD diagnosis.

If unpacking childhood trauma cracked the door open, the diagnosis blew it off the hinges.

Suddenly so much of my life made sense. The questions, the intensity, the way my brain works, the things that have always felt like personal failings — they weren't failings. They were just me. How I'm wired. And understanding that changed everything.

It's also when Self Love became non-negotiable in my toolkit. This blend is about releasing the perceptions that past experiences have built up around you — the belief that you're too much, not enough, less than. It's about building genuine confidence and self-worth from the inside out, rather than waiting for external permission to feel okay about who you are. After a late ADHD diagnosis at midlife, I needed all of that.

I stopped apologising for my ADHD brain. And in doing so, I started extending that same grace into every other corner of my life too.

Here's what I no longer apologise for:

Asking as many questions as I need. To my doctor. To my team. To contractors. To my husband. If I need to understand something, I ask until I do. Full stop. I used to shrink this part of myself constantly — worried I was being annoying, taking up too much space, being too much. Now I know that asking questions is one of the things I do best, and I refuse to apologise for it.

Saying no without a reason. No is a complete sentence. I know that's a cliché, but it took me a very long time to actually believe it. I don't owe anyone an explanation for declining something that doesn't work for me. Not anymore.

Leaving early. From events, gatherings, parties — whatever. If I've reached my limit, I leave. Quietly, kindly, and without a fifteen-minute goodbye loop where I justify my exit to every person in the room. My nervous system gets a vote too.

Cancelling when I can't show up as myself. This one was hard. I used to push through commitments even when I had nothing left to give, because cancelling felt like failing. Now I know that showing up empty and resentful doesn't serve anyone. If I can't be present, saying so is actually the more respectful thing to do.

Taking time for myself — without pre-loading the household before I go. You know what I mean. The guilt-driven prep that happens before a mum dares to take a breath for herself. Meal prepping, scheduling, briefing everyone like you're heading off on a six-month expedition. I still organise what genuinely needs organising. But I've stopped treating my own rest as something that requires a full submission process.

Making nervous system regulation non-negotiable. Whatever it looks like for me on any given day — it goes in the diary like a meeting I cannot move. Because it's not a luxury. It's how I function. It's how I stay well enough to do everything else. I protect it.

Speaking my truth, even when it's hard to hear. This one I've always had in me — the directness, the willingness to ask the hard questions and say the hard things. But I used to soften it so much it lost its shape. Truth — our throat chakra blend — has been part of holding that open for me. It's for those of us who know what we think and feel but have learned, somewhere along the way, to keep it small. Its affirmation says it all: "I communicate my truth clearly, with ease and grace." That's exactly what I'm working towards. Not loudly or aggressively — just clearly. Just mine.

None of this means I've become someone who doesn't care about others. If anything, the opposite is true. When you stop haemorrhaging energy into chronic apologising, you have so much more to actually give.

It means I know my own worth. It means I've done the work — and I'm still doing it — to understand who I am and why I am that way. And it means I've made peace with the fact that this is me. Fully, unapologetically, me.

I'm not sorry about it.

If any of this sounds familiar — if you recognise yourself in the constant sorry, the over-explaining, the shrinking — I hope you know that the shift is possible. Sometimes it starts with a single conversation, or a diagnosis that reframes your whole life, or just one moment of deciding you've apologised enough.

You don't have to keep being sorry for who you are.

You really, really don't.

Yours in Health,

Alisha x