Vachon Imagined

When someone rejects our beliefs, our personal experiences, or the way we understand the world, it can feel as though they are rejecting us.

And it is painful.

Because we do not come into this world empty.

We arrive carrying an expression of life itself.

Each of us offers something unique—the way we see, the way we feel, the way we experience being human.

It is our living expression.

Much like a child who presents a piece of artwork to a parent, they are not simply offering paper and color. They are offering a part of themselves.

And when that offering is criticized, humiliated, or disregarded, something within the child remembers.

The moment becomes part of their story.

A mark is left.

An experience becomes woven into the way they understand themselves and the world around them.

No apology, no recognition, and no acknowledgment can erase that moment as if it never happened.

It was lived.

It was experienced.

It became part of the journey.

But we have a choice in what we do with those moments.

When someone rejects our expression of life, we do not have to chase them for acceptance.

We do not have to convince them.

We do not have to force them to see what we see.

We can allow them to have their experience.

We can allow them to reject what they reject.

Because it is not our responsibility to change people or bring them into our understanding of life.

Our responsibility is to remain open.

To love them as we learn to love ourselves.

To forgive as we learn to forgive ourselves.

To remain connected to ourselves even when another person cannot meet us there.

Because another person’s inability to recognize our expression does not remove its value.

Life was still expressed.

And it was still sacred.