Marianne Faithful and the Choice to Start Anew
I’ve been listening to Marianne Faithfull’s brilliant cover of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
Her voice—worn, unsentimental—captures a particular kind of ending. Not a catastrophic ending. Not heart-shattering. Just…the quiet recognition that something is over, and you don’t have to keep living inside it.
I’ve been thinking about that in the context of leadership.
Because there’s a moment in leadership that matters more than almost any other. It’s the moment after something goes wrong.
A client said to me, “When there’s a problem, I just go straight to self-blame. I don’t see anything except that I am wrong.”
That’s not reflection or accountability. That’s collapse and self-loathing.
Over time, with this strategy, something predictable begins to happen. Because my client always took the blame, she started to receive the blame. Shared mistakes landed on her.
If you’re holding a lot...
...and would like a steady place to talk it through, I offer a free 25-minute call. No pressure, just a chance to meet and see what support might feel helpful.
Book a 25-minute Call with Angie
The self-recrimination looked like leadership, but it wasn’t. When we traced this habit back, the pattern started in second grade, at the exact moment a primary attachment figure left her life. School got harder. Expectations increased. and without this person in her life, the world, which had once felt soft and buffered, suddenly felt sharp.
Because no one named her loss, her system made meaning of it, and she alighted on her favorite go-to response to any problem: Something must be wrong with me.
In Internal Family Systems Therapy for Shame and Guilt, Martha Sweezy offers a powerful new way to see this cycle: shame preserves attachment. That is, shame itself can be a strategy for holding onto a relationship.
Many of us discover this strategy when we’re kids. When we’re small and dependent, it’s far too risky to decide that our parents, whom we have to believe will take care of us, are unreliable or outright dangerous. If we say that out loud, we might lose them altogether. So many of us make a deal: They are right. I’m the one who’s wrong. If I take the blame, I can stay connected to them.
It’s temporary solution for a child. But when it follows you into leadership, it can backfire. Because when something goes wrong, the old equation reappears: If I’m the problem, I can keep the relationship.
Leadership requires something else. A pause. We must be willing to stay in the moment of a mistake without collapsing into shame. You can feel the pull toward shame and not follow it. You can stay. Stay in your body, the room, the relationship. Without making yourself wrong.
That’s the moment the song reminds me of: Strike a match. Start anew. We do this not by denying what happened, but by refusing the old ending.
Shame always tells you that your mistakes will cost you love. But that story is over. Leadership is the capacity to remain in relationship without abandoning yourself. To begin again—and stay.
With love,
P.S.If you’ve been noticing inner conflict, numbness, anger, or a fragile kind of hope, we can explore what’s happening with real gentleness. If you want, here’s a free 25-minute Discovery Call:
