Ugh, Tanita, I’m sorry about your mom’s treatment.

Yeah, our perspective is that no one is required to forgive. If you do a bad thing, and you want to be a decent human being, you are obligated to apologize — and apologize well. But doing so doesn’t mean you’re entitled to absolution.

The medical establishment has a LOT to apologize for.

I know. Sometimes I also hate everyone (present company excepted).

However, I think SorryWatch is not about forgiveness but about meriting forgiveness. Which sometimes gets one forgiveness and sometimes doesn’t.

This whole wtfckry of people blaming health outcomes on not being chill enough to be at peace with the world and privileged enough to have a garden and the type of life which allows you to do that — it goes beyond childbirth. Read up on what doctors say to people of color who have high blood pressure, who contract diabetes (If you just ate better, maybe grew your own food…), who are overweight… My own mother had blood clots in her lungs and was given the condescending advice to exercise and lose weight. Later, in tears, she fired her doctor, after her ER visit – after wheezing for weeks – showed that she wasn’t just breathing heavily because she’d put on extra poundage. It’s a big slap in the face when someone doesn’t care enough about you to see you as an individual, and goes for the faux diagnosis: Hmm, woman of color, look at those hips, should exercise, then she’ll be as fit as her white sisters and all better. Medical stuff is already fraught enough, with the terror of our bodies betraying us and us feeling out of control — without being blamed for what we cannot control due to privilege we do not have.

Sometimes, I just hate EVERYONE. Which isn’t the forgiving attitude we’re about here at Sorrywatch, I know, but GAH. Today, I just can’t.