Heart Check — Wednesday, October 7, 2026
What has “should” locked you out of? 🔐
Beloveds,
There is a little word that can build one enormous lock.
Should.
I should be further along by now.
I should have healed by now.
I should be over it.
I should have known better.
I should have more money saved.
I should have found my person.
I should have the career figured out.
I should be stronger.
I should be happier.
I should be able to do what I used to do.
I should have forgiven myself already.
👀
That last one gets me.
Because we can even turn self-forgiveness into another reason to punish ourselves.
Look at what “should” can do.
It takes the life we imagined and holds it beside the life we actually have.
Then it points at every difference and calls it failure.
But what if it isn’t?
❤️
Some of us made plans before we knew what life was going to ask of us.
Before the loss.
Before the diagnosis.
Before the layoff.
Before the divorce.
Before the caregiving.
Before the betrayal.
Before the accident.
Before the money disappeared.
Before somebody died.
Before our bodies changed.
Before the opportunity didn’t come.
Before life took a road we never put on the map.
And now we are judging the person standing here today according to plans made by somebody who didn’t know any of that was coming.
Beloveds…
How could they?
🔐
Maybe the person you need to forgive isn’t somebody who failed you.
Maybe it is you.
The you who couldn’t make the original plan happen.
The you who didn’t see it coming.
The you who made a choice with incomplete information.
The you who stayed too long.
The you who left.
The you who trusted.
The you who didn’t trust.
The you who didn’t know then what you know now.
The you who survived something and discovered that surviving it changed you.
👀❤️
Maybe self-forgiveness sometimes sounds like:
I forgive myself for being changed by what happened to me.
Whew.
Because some of us aren’t only grieving what happened.
We are grieving who we thought we would be by now.
The marriage.
The family.
The career.
The house.
The retirement.
The health.
The independence.
The relationship.
The dream.
The version of ourselves we were certain would be standing here.
And grief like that deserves to be called grief.
Not failure.
❤️
There is another kind of “should” too.
The one that comes from everybody else.
At your age, you should…
A good parent should…
A good spouse should…
A successful person should…
A strong person should…
A believer should…
A woman should…
A man should…
Someone like you should…
Hold up.
Whose “should” is this?
👀
Mine?
My family’s?
My culture’s?
Social media’s?
Someone who has never lived one day of my life?
Or is it an expectation I created years ago that no longer fits the life I actually have?
Because not every expectation deserves permanent authority over us.
🔑
And I want to be careful here.
Releasing “should” doesn’t mean releasing accountability.
Sometimes we really did get something wrong.
Sometimes there is an apology to make.
Something to repair.
Something to learn.
Something to change.
But accountability says:
This needs attention.
Shame says:
This proves something is wrong with you.
Those are not the same thing.
👀👀
A correction is not automatically a condemnation.
A mistake is not an identity.
A changed timeline is not necessarily a failed life.
And being somewhere other than where you expected to be does not automatically mean you went nowhere.
❤️
Maybe “should” has kept you so busy staring at an imaginary finish line that you haven’t noticed how far you have actually traveled.
Maybe you didn’t arrive where you planned.
But look at what you carried.
Look at what you survived.
Look at what you learned.
Look at what you had to rebuild.
Look at how many times you began again.
That counts too.
So today’s Heart Check asks:
Where did I think I should be by now?
Who taught me that?
What happened between there and here?
Am I holding myself guilty for circumstances I never controlled?
Is there something I truly need to take responsibility for—or am I calling myself a failure simply because the map changed?
And then this one:
What has “should” locked me out of enjoying, noticing or loving about the life I actually have today?
🔐❤️
Maybe joy has been sitting right beside us while we kept looking down the road for the life that was “supposed” to arrive.
Maybe peace has been waiting for us to stop prosecuting ourselves.
Maybe there is a version of us standing right here who deserves to be known instead of constantly compared with somebody who existed only in our plans.
So today…
don’t force the lock.
Just notice the word engraved on it.
Should.
And consider whether it still belongs there.
Because maybe you didn’t fail.
Maybe the map changed.
And maybe loving yourself here is not giving up on where you’re going.
Maybe it is finally refusing to abandon the person who actually made the journey.
❤️🔐🔑🪑
loving me some you
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
